Who is Danny Yu Chang? Asian man whose face was fractured in attack wants to leave SF: 'Nothing is safe here'
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: A day before eight people, mostly Asians, were shot dead at three massage parlors in Atlanta and nearby Cherokee County in Georgia on March 16, Danny Yu Chang was walking through San Francisco’s Financial District when an assailant struck him from behind.
“Someone suddenly pushed me. I fell to the ground and passed out. I didn’t know what happened. And then when I woke up, I had blood all over,” he said. Yu Chang was gravely injured - his face was fractured, his hands were scraped, and his eyelids were bruised and swollen shut.
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Police arrested 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton in connection with the crime along with the stabbing of a 64-year-old White man at the 16th Street Mission BART Station half an hour before Yu Chang was attacked. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin charged Devis-Milton with six felonies, including aggravated mayhem and battery with serious bodily injury.
A study released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, which examined police records in 16 of the country’s largest cities, found that in 2020, reports of hate crimes were down seven percent nationally but increased 150 percent against people in the Asian community. A report released by the national coalition Stop AAPI Hate documented 3,795 anti-Asian hate incidents from the beginning of the pandemic through February 28, and of those, 1,691 took place in California. Last week saw multiple reports of such hate crimes. But Atlanta was by far the worst one.
“All this hatred of Asian Americans, I don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s got to stop,” the 59-year-old Filipino-Chinese travel agent, who grew up in the Philippines and immigrated to the Bay Area in 1999 in search of work, said of these incidents. And it has unsettled him enough to want to leave. “Nothing is safe here in California. Especially for the old people.”
Despite his assailant’s arrest, Yu Chang is reportedly still shaken. “I've lived here for 21 years, and I've been working in and around San Jose and San Francisco for all those years. I'm confident nothing will happen to me. Then all of a sudden this happened,” he said. He added, “I want to bring awareness to the Filipino people here in America to be on the lookout.”
“I was just looking for housing in Las Vegas. I couldn’t find one so I might move to Indiana, where there are smaller chances for crime. It would be safer for me and my family because right now, I’m scared to even come out because people will know me and someone might retaliate,” he said.
Yu Chang also believes there are more victims of anti-Asian hatred who haven’t spoken up. “They shouldn’t be scared to come out. Because people are not going to be aware that these are real. People say it could just be robbery, just a simple mugging. But sometimes, these are hate crimes. They’re just not reported,” he said.
A GoFundMe for Yu Chang was set up to cover the costs of his treatment. The campaign managed to raise $81,400, much more than the $50,000 target.