August 9, 2023
MANHATTAN, NYC—A 16-year-old African-American girl was arrested Tuesday on assault charges of a Nevada mother as she was riding a Manhattan train with her family last week.
The underage teenager turned herself into the NYPD Tuesday morning around 9:45 p.m. after footage of the assault went viral over the weekend.
The African-American girl is accused of violently attacking 51-year-old Sue Young in front of her twin daughters and husband as well as bystander Joanna Lin, who began filming the teen harassing the family who was visiting New York City from Nevada.
The 16-year-old was charged with two counts of assault.
When asked by ABC7 if she believes the attack was a hate crime, Young replied, “Absolutely not.”
“We don’t know what battles other people have in their lives, but I can imagine they’re probably not as privileged,” Sue Young’s husband said. “That probably has a lot to do with their outlook on the world and the anger they may have.”
The attack started when the 16-year-old suspect and her two friends started laughing and pointing at the Asian family as they sat across from them on a southbound F train approaching West 4th Street last Thursday night, according to the New York Post.
Young tried to defuse the situation and started laughing with the teenagers, which ended up enraging the teen girls.
Good old New York pic.twitter.com/UNP6RQgSsK
— Asian Dawn (@AsianDawn4) August 4, 2023
Their laughs immediately turned to insults, expletives, and threats causing multiple bystanders to try to intervene.
When the 16-year-old suspect saw that Joanna Lin began filming her, she darted over and punched Lin three times.
“She darted over, took me by the hair, threw me on the ground and started punching me,” assault victim Joanna Lin explained.
Another girl got in Young’s face and was screaming at her so Young pushed her away to try to get to Lin and the 16-year-old turned her attention to the mom, reports The Post.
“Well, as soon as I made contact and pushed her shoulders away, they all came after me. I backed up, but the girl in the white t-shirt came slugging at me… She grabbed my hair, I grabbed her hair, and I basically just grabbed onto her hair to shield my face because she was swinging,” Young explained.
Top officials at the MTA and the state weighed in on Monday.
“I haven’t seen the video, but I’ll tell you this, there’s no place for hate on our system,” MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said. “It’s being investigated.”
“This woman had no reason to be attacked, whatsoever,” Governor Kathy Hochul said. “There’s no tolerance for this in the state of New York.”
Feature Screenshot via Joanna Lin