Who is Maricia Bell? Black woman taken into custody for anti-Asian assault spree in Queens
QUEENS, NEW YORK CITY: On Thursday, July 22, a Black woman was taken into custody for an alleged anti-Asian, hate-driven crime spree that left four people injured over the course of several months in Queens.
Maricia Bell, 25, is accused of attacking three women aged: 75, 63, and 34 and a 23-year-old man in four separate incidents in the borough from May 23, 2021, according to police. A police report states that when Bell attacked her first victim, she allegedly yelled “Why are you talking to me?” before hitting the man. This incident took place in the Flushing parking lot on Kissena Boulevard, cops said. On June 16, 2021, she reportedly committed a similar assault against the 34-year-old woman inside a Pomonok bodega at around 6.40 pm.
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According to VOA: "The police data, compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, show that police departments investigated a total of 95 attacks on Asian Americans in 16 of the most populous cities in the country during the first quarter of this year, up from 36 during the first quarter of 2020. The 16 cities studied by the center, which include New York and Los Angeles, the country's two most populous, account for about 8% of the U.S. population. In the FBI's latest hate crime data for the United States as a whole, the same 16 cities accounted for more than 21% of all hate crimes in 2019." "These preliminary data show that in those large cities with the longest history of collecting anti-Asian reports, there are elevated or increasing levels of hate crime extending well into 2021," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. "We already have more hate crimes in the first quarter of 2021 in these cities than in all of pre-pandemic 2019. And in some, more than all of 2020." MEAWW has reported many similar cases of Asian hate crimes in the past. A few months back we reported a case where a 75-year-old Asian woman got sucker-punched by an NYC man. In March 2021, we reported how a racist teenager called Asian coffee shop servers 'viruses' on TikTok, sparking outrage. Whereas in another incident, Than Htwe, an Asian woman, 58, got in critical condition after a robber yanked her down in NYC subway stairs.
On July 11, 2021, at around 8 pm, Bell allegedly slugged a woman, 63, in the face as the victim was walking near 72nd Avenue near Parsons Boulevard, according to police.
As per reports, in the latest incident which took place at 71st Avenue and Parsons Boulevard, Bell allegedly whacked a 75-year-old woman with a hammer at around 7.30 am on Wednesday, July 21 authorities said. Bell is charged with many hate crime charges, including assault, harassment and robbery, police said. She has five prior arrests, sources said, including one on March 29, 2021, where she was charged with assault as a hate crime.