Post by metromanilla on Mar 18, 2021 14:14:17 GMT
'Nothing is safe here in California': Filipino man wants to leave state after violent attack in San Francisco
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
Danny Yu Chang was walking through San Francisco’s Financial District, clutching a packaged lunch from Trader Joe’s, when an assailant struck him from behind.
The blows were swift and brutal, Chang recalled Wednesday afternoon, two days after a man knocked him unconscious at Market and Montgomery streets.
He was sitting at home, his face fractured, hands scraped, eyelids bruised and swollen shut, when news came of the mass shooting that killed eight people — including six of Asian descent — near Atlanta, Ga. The stark act of violence happened as a year’s worth of increased racism reached a fever pitch.
Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the coronavirus had created a toxic undertow, which bubbled to the surface as economic pressures and bitter emotions set in. A report released Tuesday by the national coalition Stop AAPI Hate documented 3,795 anti-Asian hate incidents from the beginning of the pandemic through Feb. 28. Of those, 1,691 took place in California.
More than 700 incidents occurred in the Bay Area between March and December of last year, an earlier report found.
“All this hatred of Asian Americans, I don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s got to stop,” Chang said during a phone interview from his house in Vallejo.
The 59-year-old travel agent grew up in the Philippines and immigrated to the Bay Area in 1999 in search of a decent job so that he could send money home to his four children. Now, he feels unsettled in a place that brought so much hope 21 years ago.
“Nothing is safe here in California,” Chang said. “Especially for the old people.”
A day after the attack, Chang set up a page on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, asking supporters to help raise money so he and his wife can move out of state. That evening, police announced the arrest of 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton in connection with battery of Chang and a separate stabbing at the 16th and Mission Street BART station.
Yet Chang is still shaken, unable to see from his left eye, and afraid to walk outside, even on his own tree-lined street in a Solano County suburb.
He is among dozens of victims who have become faces of a national reckoning, at a moment of rising hate and despicable crimes of opportunity — both of which have hit the Bay Area’s Asian-American communities. In February, a string of crimes rattled Oakland Chinatown and the west side neighborhoods of San Francisco. Several were caught on surveillance videos and posted to social media, where they went viral.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, is seen with facial injuries outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, is seen with facial injuries outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
The footage showed attackers shoving elderly men, or ripping money from the hands of a shopper in a grocery store. Among the victims was Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai man walking in San Francisco’s Anza Vista neighborhood on Jan. 28. A man ran up and pushed Ratanapakdee, who fell head-first to the pavement. He died two days later.
Over the weeks that followed, Ratanapakdee’s daughter, Monthanus, saw similar incidents play out over and over. Robberies and aggressive confrontations in Oakland. A sexual assault at San Jose’s Diridon Caltrain station, by a man who yelled racial slurs at his Filipina victim. The beating of Chang on Market Street. Each attack caused a paroxysm of grief and pain.
“I feel the city is not safe for us,” Monthanus said.
Jojo Au also watched this burst of violence from her home in Oakland. She grew up in the San Antonio area east of Lake Merritt; at 30, she still feels a strong visceral connection to the community. Au chose to attend a beauty school in Chinatown so she could be among the streets and shops she remembered from childhood.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
When the disturbing videos of robberies and assaults began flooding social media, Au took action. Like Chang, she set up a GoFundMe page, raising more than $93,000 to hire private armed security guards. They began patrolling Chinatown and Little Saigon in mid-February, and will stay well into April, Au said.
“I think something needs to be done for the victims,” she told the Chronicle. “They are being wrongfully targeted. They want answers.”
In neighboring Adams Point, a leafy-green residential area near Lake Merritt, residents mourned the death of 75-year-old Pak Ho, an immigrant from Hong Kong. An alleged robber slammed him to the ground on March 11, and he suffered a traumatic brain injury.
As Ho’s friends prepare for a vigil this weekend, community leaders in Chinatown worry about the circumstances of the elderly man’s death. He was robbed and punched during a morning walk on a typical weekday, a form of exercise for many older residents in the Chinatown and Lake Merritt areas.
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On March 16, another victim — a 77-year-old Asian man — was attacked while strolling downtown at 8:30 a.m., near the Oakland Police Administration Building, said Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. Surveillance footage showed an assailant punch the elderly man in the face with his right hand, while dangling a takeout breakfast container in his left.
That evening, a news alert buzzed on Chan’s cell phone. Eight people had died in the Atlanta area shootings.
“Everybody is so concerned,” Chan said, worrying that Asian Americans face danger in the routines of daily life — like walking from Trader Joe’s on a lunch break.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
Danny Yu Chang was walking through San Francisco’s Financial District, clutching a packaged lunch from Trader Joe’s, when an assailant struck him from behind.
The blows were swift and brutal, Chang recalled Wednesday afternoon, two days after a man knocked him unconscious at Market and Montgomery streets.
He was sitting at home, his face fractured, hands scraped, eyelids bruised and swollen shut, when news came of the mass shooting that killed eight people — including six of Asian descent — near Atlanta, Ga. The stark act of violence happened as a year’s worth of increased racism reached a fever pitch.
Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the coronavirus had created a toxic undertow, which bubbled to the surface as economic pressures and bitter emotions set in. A report released Tuesday by the national coalition Stop AAPI Hate documented 3,795 anti-Asian hate incidents from the beginning of the pandemic through Feb. 28. Of those, 1,691 took place in California.
More than 700 incidents occurred in the Bay Area between March and December of last year, an earlier report found.
“All this hatred of Asian Americans, I don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s got to stop,” Chang said during a phone interview from his house in Vallejo.
The 59-year-old travel agent grew up in the Philippines and immigrated to the Bay Area in 1999 in search of a decent job so that he could send money home to his four children. Now, he feels unsettled in a place that brought so much hope 21 years ago.
“Nothing is safe here in California,” Chang said. “Especially for the old people.”
A day after the attack, Chang set up a page on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, asking supporters to help raise money so he and his wife can move out of state. That evening, police announced the arrest of 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton in connection with battery of Chang and a separate stabbing at the 16th and Mission Street BART station.
Yet Chang is still shaken, unable to see from his left eye, and afraid to walk outside, even on his own tree-lined street in a Solano County suburb.
He is among dozens of victims who have become faces of a national reckoning, at a moment of rising hate and despicable crimes of opportunity — both of which have hit the Bay Area’s Asian-American communities. In February, a string of crimes rattled Oakland Chinatown and the west side neighborhoods of San Francisco. Several were caught on surveillance videos and posted to social media, where they went viral.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, is seen with facial injuries outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, is seen with facial injuries outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
The footage showed attackers shoving elderly men, or ripping money from the hands of a shopper in a grocery store. Among the victims was Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai man walking in San Francisco’s Anza Vista neighborhood on Jan. 28. A man ran up and pushed Ratanapakdee, who fell head-first to the pavement. He died two days later.
Over the weeks that followed, Ratanapakdee’s daughter, Monthanus, saw similar incidents play out over and over. Robberies and aggressive confrontations in Oakland. A sexual assault at San Jose’s Diridon Caltrain station, by a man who yelled racial slurs at his Filipina victim. The beating of Chang on Market Street. Each attack caused a paroxysm of grief and pain.
“I feel the city is not safe for us,” Monthanus said.
Jojo Au also watched this burst of violence from her home in Oakland. She grew up in the San Antonio area east of Lake Merritt; at 30, she still feels a strong visceral connection to the community. Au chose to attend a beauty school in Chinatown so she could be among the streets and shops she remembered from childhood.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco Tuesday, stands for a portrait outside his home in Vallejo, California Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2021. Yu Chang, a travel agent and a father of four, was punched in the head from behind multiple times while on his lunch break and subsequently suffers head and facial injuries including being nearly blinded in his left eye. A suspect, identified by the San Francisco Police Department as 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton, has since been linked to a second attack 30 minutes apart near the 16th and Mission BART station that left a 64-year-old man with life-threatening injuries. Yu Chang is planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live with his wife as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
When the disturbing videos of robberies and assaults began flooding social media, Au took action. Like Chang, she set up a GoFundMe page, raising more than $93,000 to hire private armed security guards. They began patrolling Chinatown and Little Saigon in mid-February, and will stay well into April, Au said.
“I think something needs to be done for the victims,” she told the Chronicle. “They are being wrongfully targeted. They want answers.”
In neighboring Adams Point, a leafy-green residential area near Lake Merritt, residents mourned the death of 75-year-old Pak Ho, an immigrant from Hong Kong. An alleged robber slammed him to the ground on March 11, and he suffered a traumatic brain injury.
As Ho’s friends prepare for a vigil this weekend, community leaders in Chinatown worry about the circumstances of the elderly man’s death. He was robbed and punched during a morning walk on a typical weekday, a form of exercise for many older residents in the Chinatown and Lake Merritt areas.
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On March 16, another victim — a 77-year-old Asian man — was attacked while strolling downtown at 8:30 a.m., near the Oakland Police Administration Building, said Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. Surveillance footage showed an assailant punch the elderly man in the face with his right hand, while dangling a takeout breakfast container in his left.
That evening, a news alert buzzed on Chan’s cell phone. Eight people had died in the Atlanta area shootings.
“Everybody is so concerned,” Chan said, worrying that Asian Americans face danger in the routines of daily life — like walking from Trader Joe’s on a lunch break.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan