Vancouver police release video of New Year's Eve stranger attack

UPDATE — Jan. 25, 2022: Police said Tuesday one man has been arrested in connection with the incident on New Year's Eve. A 50-year-old man was charged with assault, according to a statement.

EARLIER STORY:

Vancouver police are asking for the public's help identifying the suspect in an apparent random physical attack of a woman on Dec. 31 that happened in broad daylight on the sidewalk of one of the city's busiest streets.

Security camera video shows the 22-year-old victim, who is Asian, walking in front of the Hotel Georgia on West Georgia Street when a man, walking in the opposite direction, suddenly grabs her, throws her violently backwards into a planter and then against a wall before holding her down. 

The assault happened at 3:30 in the afternoon and lasted about 10 seconds.

The video shows the woman struggling free while the suspect picks up the large blue bag he was carrying and walks away heading east on West Georgia Street. The woman walks away in the other direction.

VPD spokesman Sgt. Steve Addison said an investigation has been ongoing since the attack but police only obtained the video this week.

"We don't know all the circumstances, which is why we're putting this call out to the public," he said. 

"It's a blitz-style attack on this young woman who didn't see it coming. We've been working with her ... but we need to know who this guy is. We need to identify him so we can find out what was going on. Was it robbery? Was it a hate crime?"

'Here we go again'

Barbara Lee, founder of the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and Eliminate Hate, said when she saw the video of the young Asian woman being attacked, she felt like nothing had changed since last year when the city saw a surge of anti-Asian racism.

"I felt like here we go again and again. It's another vulnerable person from our community," Lee said. "It's sort of that numbness that nothing's changing. It's despair. We're still frozen from this thought that it could happen to any one of us and what do we do about it?"

Last year VPD reported an average of four unprovoked stranger assaults every day in the city. 

Lee said the festival's advocacy arm, Eliminate Hate, has been pushing police to gather race-based data from victims of random attacks.

"It helps with policy, it helps with intervention," Lee said. "It helps with coming up with ways to meet the needs of the community."

Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women's Support Services, says they've seen an increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic.

"We have to recognize that in Vancouver since 2020, anti-Asian violence has increased 700 per cent, with Asian women making up close to 60 per cent of the victims," she said. "The intersection of race and gender and racist misogyny is one of the many factors that policymakers and law enforcement continue to be unwilling to recognize."

Police describe the suspect as middle-aged, wearing grey pants and a black jacket on top of a black shirt with a logo in the middle and a black tuque. He was wearing headphones and carrying a blue bag.

Anyone with information is asked to call investigators at 604-717-4022.