Date: Wednesday, May 5, 2021
File: 21-17322
Victoria, BC – Patrol officers arrested a man yesterday afternoon after a hate-motivated assault on a woman and her children.
Shortly after 12 p.m. on Tuesday, May 4th, a non-uniformed VicPD officer, in civilian clothes and driving their personal vehicle, witnessed a shirtless man acting erratically in the 3000-block of Quadra Street. The shirtless man yelled and postured aggressively toward a man and his child. The man and child moved away from the suspect for their safety and were not physically harmed.
The suspect then headed towards Quadra Elementary School. The officer followed the man and called for additional uniformed police officers to attend. The suspect then obtained a broom handle and approached a woman walking with a stroller and her four children. The man spat at the family, narrowly missing a child, and yelled racial slurs regarding the family’s Asian ethnicity. The non-uniformed officer approached to intervene and the man then attacked the non-uniformed officer’s vehicle, damaging it.
Uniformed officers arrived and arrested the man moments later. The man was transported to VicPD cells where he was held in custody. He faces recommended charges of assault and mischief. The incident is being treated as a hate-motivated crime.
British Columbia and North America have seen significant increases in hate-motivated crime towards Asian persons. Thankfully we have not seen a similar significant increase in these crimes towards Asian members of our Victoria and Esquimalt communities.
This file remains under investigation.
If you have information about this incident and have not spoken to officers, please call the VicPD Report Desk at (250) 995-7654 extension 1. To report what you know anonymously, please call Greater Victoria Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
-30-