A California woman has been charged with civil rights abuses for allegedly uttering racial slurs and spitting on an Asian man eating lunch at a Mountain View, California, restaurant.
She allegedly also refused to pay her bill because the restaurant served Asians.
The incident has been described as another in a rising number of hate crimes against Asians, according to police and court reports released Wednesday.
Mountain View police said Karen Inman, 39, was arrested late last week after refusing to pay her bill at a Smart & Final grocery store.
Inman refused to pay the clerk because the store served Asian people. The cashier was Asian, too, according to police reports.
Inman is also a suspect in two other attacks against Asian people in February, the reports said.
"Hate crimes have not and will not be tolerated in Mountain View and as this case demonstrates, we take these crimes seriously and will investigate them to the fullest," local police chief Chris Hsiung said in a statement.
Inman is accused of telling the diner to "go back to where you came from." She then spat on him, the Santa Clara district attorney's office said.
Hate crimes against the Asian American community are on the rise. In a statement released by district attorney Jeff Rosen, he said he stood with the Asian and Pacific islands community against any acts of hate and racism.
According to police, Inman was released after the incidents because the alleged victims didn't bring charges and officers didn't witness the alleged crimes.
However, Inman was later remanded to the Santa Clara county jail on suspicion of robbery and two counts of civil rights violations with the use of force or threat, The State News said.
Meanwhile, California State University's Center for the study of hate and extremism gathered data from 16 of the most populous cities in the U.S. and found 122 incidents of hate crimes against Asian Americans in 2020 compared with 49 incidents in 2019, Voice of America reported.
