In January of this year, a man named Mr. Martunovich killed three people with a hammer in a Brooklyn Chinese buffet restaurant. He has had a history of mental illness but had no history of violent outbursts. He was arrested on charges of murder and was sent to a psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. The man was viewing himself as a savior after he watched a film of Asian men abusing Asian women and apparently decided to do something about it. This is being called a hate crime and it definitely sounds plausible, the man did have a mental illness and perhaps he was having an extreme outburst, but this does appear to be a hate crime whether it was intentional or not.
“That afternoon, the police said, Mr. Martunovich yelled curses as he made a beeline for the restaurant manager, Thang Kheong Ng, a 61-year-old Malaysian immigrant. Unprovoked, he struck Mr. Ng over the head, spilling blood over the gleaming floor in front of the counter.
Mr. Martunovich then ran toward the buffet, filled with steaming plates of vegetables and seafood, where he swung the hammer at a part owner of the restaurant, Tsz Pun, 51, crushing his skull, the police said. In the kitchen, he bludgeoned Mr. Pun’s nephew, Fufai Pun, who had worked as a chef there since he was a teenager.”
I agree with the article that it was a hate crime and I wonder what film he had seen to have such an influence on him to attack these Asian men in order to effect his thinking in this manner.