MANHATTAN – A hate crime during Pride month on the Upper East Side has police looking for the woman who hurled homophobic slurs and tried to rip stranger’s mask off in broad daylight before things got even uglier.
It was 1:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 22nd when police say the unnerving scene unfolded in front of Móle, a mexican restaurant on Second Avenue near East 90th Street in Yorkville.
The victim, a 34-year-old man, had a rainbow mask around his neck, according to Patch. When the suspect saw it, sources tell Upper East Site she told him to “take that fa**ot shit off your neck.”
After making that vile statement and trying to rip off the mask, police say the suspect then threw her own bag at the victim and spit on him— an even more disturbing act in the age of Covid-19.
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After that, police say the woman took off. It’s not clear what would prompt this hateful attack in broad daylight, but two things are clear— the surveillance photo and that the NYPD is taking the incident very seriously, putting the Hate Crimes Task Force on the case.
Meantime, bias crimes reported to the NYPD this year are up 400% from 2020– skyrocketing from just two hate crimes in the first six months of 2020 to ten hate crimes in the first half of 2021– according to NYPD CompStat statistics.
Police are asking that anyone who recognizes the woman with short hair seen in the surveillance photo to reach out to NYPD CrimeStoppers at 800-577-8477— all calls are strictly confidential so you remain anonymous.
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