Man Charged With Murder In East Harlem Beating Of Yao Pan Ma

EAST HARLEM, NY — A man has been charged with murder in last year's brutal beating of Yao Pan Ma — a 61-year-old immigrant who was attacked while collecting cans in East Harlem and died from his injuries months later.

Jarrod Powell, 50, has been indicted for second-degree murder as a hate crime, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Thursday. The upgraded charge comes nearly 10 months after the April 2021 attack, and weeks after Ma died in a hospital, where he had remained comatose.

Ma, a father of two originally from China, was collecting cans near the corner of East 125th Street and Third Avenue around 8:15 p.m. on April 23. Powell, unprovoked, ran up from behind and knocked him to the ground, proceeding to stomp on Ma's head repeatedly and kick him in the head, face and neck, according to prosecutors.

The attack on Ma was widely condemned, coming amid a spate of other attacks against Asian New Yorkers last spring — including the beating of a 65-year-old Filipino woman in Hell's Kitchen weeks earlier. Powell later claimed he had been attacked by "two Korean or Japanese men" the day before he allegedly attacked Ma, prosecutors said.

After the attack, Powell fled the scene, while Ma lay unconscious on the corner, prosecutors said. A bus driver who saw the attack unfold while stopped at a traffic light then flagged down an ambulance.

Police released surveillance footage of the then-unidentified suspect in the days after the attack, finally arresting him four days after the beating. Powell, who lived nearby on East 125th Street, was initially charged with attempted murder, and two counts of assault as a hate crime.

Ma suffered a traumatic brain injury in addition to facial fractures and bleeding to the brain. He was put in a medically-induced coma, in which he remained until his death on Dec. 31. Relatives had called on the D.A. to upgrade charges against Powell following Ma's death.

“We’re fighting for justice and I hope (Powell) never walks the streets as a free man," Karlin Chan, an activist serving as a spokesperson for Ma's family, told the Associated Press. "He needs to pay for what he did.”

Manhattan prosecutors have 33 open hate crime cases related to anti-Asian incidents, the D.A.'s office said Thursday. Last year, the office prosecuted nearly four times as many anti-Asian hate crimes than in 2020.

"The devastating death of Yao Pan Ma, a beloved father of two, occurred amidst a surge of anti-Asian attacks targeting our families, friends, neighbors, and New York values," Bragg said in a statement. "As alleged, Jarrod Powell selectively attacked Mr. Ma for no other reason than his race."

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