Woman Faces Hate Crime Charges For Pepper Spraying Asian Women, Making Racist Comments

New York -- A woman was arrested for allegedly pepper-spraying a group of Asian women in New York.

Madeline Barker, 47, is facing several hate crime charges in connection with the attack, the New York Police Department said Saturday.

The woman of Merritt Island, Florida, allegedly got into a "verbal altercation" with the four Asian women in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood around 6 p.m. on June 11, the NYPD said, according to CBS News.

“Go back to where you came from!” and “Go back to your country!” the suspect allegedly yelled at the women.

Barker spewed the anti-Asian statements before being filmed using pepper spray on the women.

"It was so painful. I couldn't open my eyes for about 30 minutes," one victim told ABC7NY.

Images of Barker were released days before she was arraigned.

The victims said they were enjoying the afternoon with friends and checking out the flower installations in the Meatpacking District when the stranger picked up an argument with them.

"She turned around and she was like, 'you guys are trying to harass me,'" one victim told the outlet.

"I said, we're not trying to bother you," another added.

One of the women even apologized to Barker saying, “I'm sorry, I didn't intend to make you feel that way.”

"She pointed to an Asian bystander who was a man, we didn't know who he was, pointed at him and said take your (expletive) back to your country," one victim said.

The women said they have been life-long New Yorkers and are aware of hate crimes involving Asians.

"It's not like we haven't had racist remarks towards us growing up, but this was like the first time we've ever felt it to this physical extent," said one of the women.

Barker is being held at Rikers Island on $20,000 bail after being arraigned late Saturday. She was charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime, two counts of attempted assault as a hate crime, and four counts of harassment as a hate crime. Her next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.

“These attackers need to be held accountable for their dangerous behavior,” ACPB President Susan Lee, a former city council candidate, told the New York Post on Sunday about the series of attacks targeting Asians in New York since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Jacky Wong of the Greater Chinatown Civic Association, many such incidents are “under-recorded and under-reported because law enforcement and elected officials are not taking them seriously enough.”

Wong said Barker’s arrest is “just the tip of an iceberg.”

“With the anti-Asian crimes still trending in New York City, many Chinatown seniors [would] rather go hungry than go shopping because they don’t want to get harassed,” she went on to say. “Asian women are taking defensive classes. Parents worry about their children being targeted in playgrounds because of their race. [Yet] we have not seen any effective solution to the anti-Asian violence from the government.”