Man charged with hate crime in assault of Asian person
A man has been charged with a hate crime for a racially motivated attack of an Asian person in San Francisco’s Polk Gulch neighborhood last month, the district attorney’s office said Tuesday.
Anell Medrano pleaded not guilty to one count of assault with a deadly weapon, with a special allegation of a hate crime, at his arraignment last week, according to the DA’s office. Medrano, 35, is being held in San Francisco County Jail on a $62,500 bond, jail records showed.
According to jail records, Medrano was also arrested on suspicion of possession of unlawful drug paraphernalia and an unspecified misdemeanor warrant.
During the assault, which occurred on March 28 near Polk and Vallejo streets, Medrano made “racial statements” toward the victim and the attack was partly motivated by “racial animus,” according to the DA’s office. Prosecutors did not provide additional information regarding the assault.
In an interview with Sky Link TV, a Bay Area TV station that offers reporting in Cantonese, two people who said they were victims of Medrano described the assault.
“All of a sudden, the person threw a stone at us,” a person identified as Kifer Hu said. “When we turned around and looked over, we saw the suspect. Then he kept scolding us. He said ‘hate Chinese.’ That’s what we heard.”
Another person, who identified himself as Marcus, had a scratch around his eye. “I could have been seriously injured,” Marcus said. “But it’s just a skin injury. If I hadn’t ducked in time, my eyes could have been hurt, too.”
The DA’s office said it was seeking to detain Medrano until his trial. His next court date is scheduled for April 15 for a preliminary hearing and a hearing regarding the DA’s motion to detain him.
“Anti-Asian hate crimes are unacceptable. and these baseless attacks have absolutely no place on our streets in San Francisco,” said a statement by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. “Hate crimes shake our communities and have reverberating effects felt in neighborhoods across the City. My office stays committed to prosecuting hate crimes against all races, religions and groups when we have the evidence necessary to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Although hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans have fallen since hitting a peak in 2021, members of the AAPI community gathered at San Francisco City Hall in February said they still felt unsafe. The gathering preceded a hearing on the state of crime and violence targeting Asian American seniors, the Chronicle reported.
In 2023, San Francisco police investigated 14 incidents they believed merited anti-Asian hate crime charges, Sgt. Jamie Hyun, an officer in the department’s special investigations division, said at the hearing. There were six such incidents in 2022, 60 in 2021 and 10 in 2020, the Chronicle reported.