Just recently last week, Jing Chen, an Asian American pregnant woman, was punched in the face after the suspect, Delores Marte, sprayed her and her daughter with water recently this past week. It was said by a witness that Marte had deliberately singled Jing Chen and her 12 year-old daughter out and crossed the street to attack them both. In an interview with Action News this past Wednesday, Chen recounted the incident while choosing not to show her face in fear of retaliation.
According to Chen, this is what happened
Chen was walking on the street when a woman appeared before her and sprayed water on both her and her 12-year-old daughter. Chen responded with a question asking, “Why did you do that?”
The woman, suspected to be Delores Marte, only responded with, “You (expletive), Chinese (expletive).”
After hearing that, Chen said in the interview, “So, I, as a mom said, ‘You too!’” After hearing Chen’s words, Marte came back up to Chen’s face to which Chen asked, “What you gonna do? I’m pregnant, are you going to hurt me?”
“So what?” Marte replied and then punched Chen in the face. Ever since this event, Chen has been terrified to leave her house.
This is just one of the thousands of anti-Asian incidents that has occurred across America. It is also heartbreaking to see that Asians tend to choose to conceal their identity out of fear that they will be attacked again, even though they have done nothing wrong by reporting it. Community advocates Anna Perng and John Chin are both working on addressing the case and the ongoing racism in their community. Perng says, “The assailant deliberately crossed the street and singled them out and then mentioned race during the attack.”
However, while race and ethnicity was clearly and explicitly stated in Marte's words during the incident, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office released a statement claiming, “This is an active investigation and we have not ruled out additional charges, but there is not sufficient evidence that has been presented to us that this is a case of ethnic intimidation at this time.” As of August 7th, the charges for Marte’s arrest are for simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and harassment.