Who Is Brandon Elliot? Man Charged With Assaulting Asian American Woman in Viral Video

Police in New York City have arrested a man suspected of attacking an elderly Asian woman.

Brandon Elliot, 38, was charged with assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault at 1.10 a.m. on Wednesday, the New York Police Department confirmed to Newsweek.

According to NBC New York, Elliot is on lifetime parole after he was released from prison in 2019. He was reportedly convicted of murdering his own mother in 2002.

Elliot was living at the Four Points by Sheraton on West 40th Street, according to the NYPD. The hotel, which serves as a homeless shelter, is a few blocks from the scene of Monday’s attack.

The 65-year-old woman had been walking in midtown Manhattan when a man kicked her in the stomach, knocked her to the ground and and stamping on her head repeatedly outside an apartment building at 360 West 43rd Street, near Times Square. He also shouted anti-Asian slurs at her, and said “you don’t belong here” before walking off.

She was released from hospital Tuesday after being treated for serious injuries, according to The Associated Press.

Police covered the area with wanted posters and offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect in the attack, the latest in a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. It also came weeks after shootings at Atlanta area spas left eight people, six of them Asian women, dead.

Several bystanders were criticized after surveillance video from inside a building showed they witnessed the crime, but did not intervene. One security guard was seen closing the building’s door as the woman was on the ground.

“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said, calling it “absolutely unacceptable” that witnesses did not do something to stop the assault.

“If you see someone being attacked, do whatever you can,” he said. “Make noise. Call out what’s happening. Go and try and help.”

Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, who is Asian American, also condemned the bystanders.

“An elderly Asian woman walking the streets of Hell’s Kitchen could easily have been my mother, because that’s where we lived,” he said Tuesday. “So, seeing this happen in my neighborhood hit very close to home. It also was incredibly disheartening how bystanders, in this case, personnel at the building, did nothing, and apparently didn’t even go to the woman’s aid after it was clear that she was in distress. And this is exactly the opposite of what we need here in New York City.”

The company that manages the condo building announced on Tuesday that the employees involved in the incident have been suspended.

“The staff who witnessed the attack have been suspended pending an investigation in conjunction with their union,” the Brodsky Organization wrote on Instagram.

The company said it is also working to identify a “third-party delivery vendor” who was also there “so that appropriate action can be taken.”

Attacks on Asians and Asian Americans have risen sharply during the coronavirus pandemic.

A report from Stop AAPI Hate released earlier this month revealed that almost 3,800 incidents were reported to the organization between March 19, 2020 and February 28 but the group said that number is “only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur.”

A poster of a suspect hangs from a post as a man holds a placard after an Asian American anti-violence press conference on March 30, 2021, outside the building were a 65-year-old Asian woman was attacked in New York. Kena Bentacur/AFP via Getty Images