Police: Store owned by Asians trashed by man wielding a pole

An Asian-owned convenience store in Charlotte, North Carolina, was trashed by a man who wielded a metal post and yelled racial slurs, according to police and a son of the store’s owners.

Surveillance footage shows a man pulling a merchandise rack to the floor and swinging a street sign post into the glass of the refrigerators. A man who appears to be a friend of the attacker cheers him on.

The attack occurred Tuesday at a store called Plaza Sundries that is downtown near Charlotte’s main transit hub.

And it falls in the wake of an attack on a woman of Asian descent in New York City and the fatal shooting of eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses. Six of those victims were women of Asian descent.

Despite the increase in attention on such attacks, the violence and racially charged language was nothing new, said Mark Sung, whose parents own the store, and his wife Grace Lee Sung.

“When my husband got the call (about the attack), it was like a routine,” Lee Sung said. “He was like, “OK, check the mess. See the surveillance. File the (police) report.”

The pandemic has fueled the tension, the couple said, with some people blaming the coronavirus on the store’s owners. They have lived in the U.S. for decades since moving from South Korea.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, you’re different,’” Lee Sung said, offering a sanitized summary of the insults. “‘You obviously can’t be from around here. Go back to your country.’”