Who is Michael Vivona? California man, 25, who punched Korean American couple, 79 and 80, says he hates Asians
ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: After allegedly punching an elderly Korean-American couple over the weekend and harassing a Japanese-American Olympic athlete in the same park earlier this month, a 26-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of elder abuse and committing the hate crime, according to Orange County police.
The elderly couple pair was walking through Grijalva Park, near Prospect and Spring streets on April 18 just before 7.40 pm, when a man approached them and punched them in the face, knocking them down. Michael Vivona was arrested on April 18 and had admitted that he hates Asians, police announced.
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Who is Michael Vivona?
Michael Orlando Vivona, who is from Corona, California, said he had a “hate" or “fixation" about Asians, Orange Police Department Sgt. Phil McMullin said to Times Union. Vivona was unprovoked, said police, when he punched the couple, an 80-year-old woman and a 79-year-old man and knocked them down.
“The couple was on one of their evening walks as they do on a regular basis at this park when our suspect approached, unprovoked, and punched both of them in the face, causing both of them to fall to the ground,” the sergeant said. “We believe that this attack was racially motivated based on our investigation and our interview that happened afterward,” he added. “He specifically said that he had a hate towards the Asian community.”
McMullin said that paramedics treated the patients, who did not sustain serious injuries, at the Orange park, after which they said they could just head back home on their own. They were offered a lift home by police, but they declined. “People at the park surrounded him and held him until officers got there,” McMullin said in a report by OC Register. “People knew about the incident from before.”
Vivona was wearing the same clothes he wore on April 1, when he harassed Sakura Kokumai, a highly decorated Hawaiian-born Japanese-American karate champion who is set to represent the United States in the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Vivona, who has since been identified by police, yelled at her aggressively. Kokumai took out her phone to record the rant and later posted it on her Instagram page, drawing the wrath of many, particularly at a time when it appears that the number of attacks against Asian people is on the rise. The man in the video can be heard yelling the word “Chinese” and saying, “You’re a loser. Go home, you stupid (expletive). … I’ll (expletive) you up."
“In that moment, I thought, ‘gosh, this guy is just crazy.’ But when I zoomed out I realized there were a lot of people at the park,” Kokumai wrote in the Instagram post. “Yes a women did come up and asked if I was ok towards the end as it escalated…but for the longest time no one cared. People would walk by, some even smiled. And I didn’t know what to do.” Although Kokumai did not initially file a police report, she did so later, McMullin said.
“Yes, what happened was horrible, but I don’t know which was worse, a stranger yelling and threatening to hurt me for no reason or people around me who witnessed everything and not doing a thing,” she said in her post.
According to police, Vivona was wearing the same clothes in both incidents and appears to be a transient living out of his car; his last known home city is Corona. According to McMullin, he was unknown to Orange police. He was being held in lieu of $65,000 bail, jail records show.