VIDEO: Asian Women Pepper Sprayed In West Vil By Stranger Clad In Pink

WEST VILLAGE, NY — A woman clad in a pink pepper-sprayed four Asian women and spewed racist slurs in the West Village last weekend, according to police and video released Tuesday.

Video taken near 14th Street and Ninth Avenue about 6 p.m. Saturday shows the woman waving pepper spray and demanding women at the other end of a folding table "move," police said.

The woman also told the Asian women to "go back to where you came from, go back to your country," a police spokesperson told Patch.

The four women were not the only Asians targeted, according to police.

The woman also told an Asian man to "take your 'expletive' back to where you came from," according to police.

And a 13-year-old girl may have been among three people pepper sprayed and abused by the woman earlier that day, as one of the four women told ABC7.

The four women had been enjoying the L.E.A.F. Festival of Flowers when the woman in pink came up to them and said, "you guys are trying to harass me," ABC7 reported.

The women tried to move away from her and even apologized, according to the report.

When the woman in pink did not leave, one of her soon-to-be victims began to record, ABC7 reported.

A press release notes the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating.

Police describe the woman as being in her 50s, standing about 5 feet 3 inches tall, and weighing approximately 120 pounds, police said.

This news arrives as New York City faces a staggering increase in hate crimes against the Asian community.

There were 131 hate crimes targeting Asians in New York City in 2021, compared to 28 in 2020 and just one in 2019, according to the NYPD.

"We are at a breaking point right now," Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director for the Asian American Federation, told Patch in March "Everyone is horrified."

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).