A walk along the Long Island City waterfront turned violent Thursday night when a young Asian American couple was approached by a stranger who shouted anti-Asian remarks and attacked them.
The 21-year-old woman and 22-year-old man were on a pedestrian walkway around 8:30 p.m. Sept. 10 when the encounter began, according to reporting from FOX 5 New York and QNS.
The attacker struck the woman in the back of the head and hit the man during the confrontation. But getting away did not immediately end it.
The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is now investigating the incident. No arrest had been announced as of Saturday.
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QNS reported that the couple initially moved away from the attacker and tried to put distance between them.
A short time later, the assailant approached them again.
The man was then sprayed in the back of the head with an unknown substance, prompting the couple to run toward Hunter’s Point South Park.
They made it to Frank Ottomanelli’s By The Water, where restaurant employees stepped in to help.
Hunters Point Civic Association President James Edstrom told QNS that the pair appeared terrified and that staff stopped what they were doing to calm them. Employees also gave the man napkins so he could clean the substance from his hair.
The couple declined medical attention at the scene.
Two Descriptions
There is an unresolved discrepancy over the attacker’s description.
Information provided by police to local news outlets described the suspect as an unknown man.
QNS, however, reported that the female victim later described the attacker in a social media post as a woman. In that account, she said she and her boyfriend were walking when the stranger first struck her, then came running back toward them and attacked both of them while using racial and homophobic slurs.
Edstrom also told QNS that he had noticed a woman near the restaurant whom he later believed had followed the couple there.
He described seeing the woman apparently looking for someone around the same time restaurant staff alerted him to the frightened couple. His belief that she was their attacker has not been independently established.
Police had not released a detailed public suspect description as of the latest reports.
A Wider Look
The case falls within the NYPD’s 108th Precinct, which covers Long Island City as well as Sunnyside and Woodside.
The precinct’s latest CompStat report, covering data through Sept. 6, recorded seven hate crimes so far in 2026, compared with five at the same point in 2025 — a 40% increase.
The same report recorded 207 felony assaults year to date, compared with 204 during the equivalent period last year, an increase of 1.5%.
Those figures are preliminary and subject to revision, according to the NYPD.
The Hate Crimes Task Force investigation into the waterfront assault remained ongoing, and police were reviewing surveillance footage as they worked to identify the person responsible.
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