The video of the attack shows a person wearing a red top running up to a man and a woman on the street, then swings at the man as the woman cries out while another individual looks on. In another clip, the male victim is being cursed at and seems to be pushed or struck, though it is unclear in the video whether it is the same attacker or another person as part of a group.
The attack happened on November 19, 2020, Tacoma Police Public Information Officer Wendy Haddow told CNN. A complaint was filed at the time, she said, but police did not connect it to the video until family members of the victims recognized their relatives in the footage.
“The family saw it on the news,” Haddow said. She declined to comment on whether the person who shot the video was one of the attackers, citing the continuing investigation.
The victims did not know the attackers, according to Tacoma Police.
“They had never seen them before, never dealt with them before,” said Haddow. She told CNN it will be up to the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office to decide whether to prosecute the case as a hate crime.
“I want him to be better. I want him to know this was bad,” the man said in Korean, according to a translation by KIRO.