On Wednesday, while a 76-year-old Asian woman was waiting to cross the street in San Francisco, she was punched in the face by a 39-year-old man. But Xiao Zhen Xie acted quickly when she spotted a two-foot stick nearby. She grabbed the stick and hit him back, so hard he was sent to the hospital with a bloody face, and apparently “dazed".
“This bum, he hit me,” Xie told a crowd in Chinese, crying as she held the stick she’d used to defend herself.
Speaking to CBS San Francisco about her experience, while her daughter Dong-Mei Lei translated, Zie said she had been left shaken by the attack.
“Very traumatised, very scared and this eye is still bleeding,” she said.
“The right eye still cannot see anything and (is) still bleeding and we have something to absorb the bleeding.”
Zie, who said the assault was entirely unprovoked, added that her reflex was to fight back.
Both she and her attacker ended up in the hospital following her attempt to defend herself, however, the attacker needed a stretcher.
The 39-year-old man suspected of attacking Xie has not been named, but he is under investigation for the alleged attack, as well as a previous one on an 83-year-old man.
The attack occurred less than 24 hours after the Atlanta mass shooting that killed eight people, including six Asians.
