Assemblyman William Colton (D – Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, and Dyker Heights) attended a press conference regarding the heinous and vicious hate crime that was committed against an 89-year-oldAsian American senior citizen in Southern Brooklyn.

“An 89-year-old woman walking out of her house on to the street, with no provocation or any kind of confrontation gets hit and then they set her shirt on fire. What can be more violent or obscene than this picture? What have we become, what are we becoming when an 89-year-old senior has to worry when she walks out of the door of her house? It’s a catastrophe. This is something that is everyone must condemn and, in my mind, there is no doubt that it’s a hate crime. When someone is attacked at random without a reason or any confrontation other than a fact that they are who they are that’s a hate crime and the two young people who committed that crime should be apprehended and have to be punished to the full extent of the law. This should be treated as attempted murder because when you attack a senior it’s a reasonable likelihood that that person wouldn’t survive an attack and it cannot be tolerated. It’s an unthinkable crime. An attack on one group is an attack on all of us and we will not allow it,” Colton stated.