A Sri Lankan immigrant attacked on a Manhattan train last week was the victim of an anti-Asian attack, an eyewitness told The Post on Sunday.
George Okrepkie, 56, said he was sitting in front of 68-year-old Narayange Bodhi on Friday afternoon when a fedora-clad man approached the older rider and threw him: and gave him a blow. the fist.
“Suddenly, the guy was on top of the old man making a stabbing move, he was just hitting him on the head,” Okrepkie said. “In a matter of seconds, the blood was everywhere [victim].
“The assailant jumped out of the boy. I tried to grab him [the attacker]. I could not. The doors were already opening and he climbed out of the train. I turned my attention to the victim and gave her a tourniquet so she wouldn’t bleed from her head, “said Okrepkie, who used his new Burberry handkerchief to stop the bleeding.
The assailant escaped when the train stopped at Franklin Street station, the witness said.
Okrepkie captured Bodhi’s bloodied face in a photograph that has since gone viral.
“I took a picture, just because I wanted to make sure we remembered what was really going on,” he said about the attack and others against Asian Americans. “These are not people who are in traps or pushes either [receiving] racial insults: people are being dramatically injured. “
An NYPD representative told The Post on Sunday that the department has no evidence that the attack was motivated on racial grounds.
But Okrepkie, who said he stayed with the victim for 15 minutes until the EMTs and police arrived, told The Post, “I don’t know what the hell you have to do to call him a hate crime.
“I think today’s Asians are inefficient, and they’re such a big part of our city. It’s a big group of people. They’re Vietnamese, they’re Chinese, they’re from Korea, they’re from Japan. [attacker] I didn’t care where the boy was from. [The victim] he just looked Asian. “
New York City is experiencing an increase in attacks on people of Asian descent. Last year there were 28 racially motivated attacks compared to only two in 2019.
The Post was unable to contact Bodhi to comment.
Additional reports from Tina Moore