OLIVIA MUNN: RIMEBUSTER
Helps track ‘Asian-attacker’
Olivia Munn is becoming one of New York’s finest crimefighters. The actress for the second time assisted cops in solving a crime — most recently helping them catch a suspect wanted in an attack on an Asian woman in Queens. Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said Thursday detectives from the 109th Precinct arrested 47-yearold Patrick Mateo in connection with an assault on a 52-year-old woman at Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing Tuesday afternoon. “The vicious attack led to the victim sustaining a large laceration to her forehead, which required five stitches,” Harrison tweeted. News of the arrest comes a day after Munn had enlisted Internet sleuths to help track down the man who assaulted the woman, who is a friend of the actress’ mom. “She left the hospital with 10 stitches in her head,” Munn wrote with a picture of the suspect. “We’re gonna find this guy. Queens, Internet, please . . . do your s--t.” Mateo, who is facing charges of assault and harassment, pushed the woman to the ground after an argument, cops said.
Munn’s friend posted her dismay over the attack on Facebook.
“I am heart broken and devastated,” Maggie Kayla Cheng wrote.
“He shoved her with such force that she hit her head on the concrete and passed out on the floor. She received 5-10 stitches on her forehead, spending 4-5 hours in the hospital.”
“The X-Men: Apocalypse” actress has a history of helping the NYPD. She helped cops in 2019 catch a Wag dog walker who tried to make off with a Manhattan couple’s pooch.
The recent attack came just days after Munn, whose mother is from Vietnam of Chinese descent, had spoken out about antiAsian hate crime.
“The racist, verbal, and physical assaults have left my community fearful to step outside,” she wrote.
“These hate crimes have spiked since Covid and continue to increase even though we ask for help, even though we ask our fellow Americans to be outraged for us, even though we ask for more mainstream media coverage.”
Police were unsure if the attack was part of a growing nationwide trend of anti-Asian attacks.
One way or another, though, Cheng was furious.
“Hate crime has no place in our community,” she wrote.
Mateo has two prior arrests, for possession of a knife in a Manhattan subway in 2014 and for shoplifting from a Queens Target in 2017, according to cops.