SAN FRANCISCO — Police were hunting for a man who stabbed two Asian American women without warning Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco’s Mid-Market area.
Officers were sent to 4th and Stockton streets shortly before 5 p.m. and found the wounded women, who were taken to a hospital. There was no immediate word on their conditions.
Witnesses told KPIX-TV that one woman appeared to be elderly and the other appeared to be in her 30s. They told the station that a man clutching a knife was walking down Market Street when he approached a bus stop, stabbed the women, and then walked away.
Police didn’t immediately indicate whether the women were specifically targeted or whether the attack might be a hate crime.
Asian Americans have been the target of several unprovoked attacks in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent months.
Prosecutors have filed assault and hate crime charges against a man accused of an attack last week in which he allegedly yelled racial slurs before knocking down Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.
In separate San Francisco attacks in March, an 83-year-old Vietnamese man was knocked down and broke his neck in the fall, and a 77-year-old woman was similarly attacked. Police arrested a man for assault and elder abuse in both cases.
Another 83-year-old man was pushed down in February, broke a hip and spent weeks in the hospital and in rehabilitation.
The Associated Press
