A man was arrested Tuesday after being caught on surveillance video trashing an Asian-owned convenience store in Charlotte, North Carolina and yelling racial slurs at the owners.
Xavier Rashee Woody-Silas, 24, was arrested on six charges including damage to personal property, robbery with a dangerous weapon, communicating threats, misdemeanor larceny, and disorderly conduct, according to WBTV.
Xavier Woody-Silas, 24, is facing charges after police say he walked into the Plaza Sundries convenience store Tuesday afternoon and vandalized/robbed/threatened the owners of the convenience store at the Charlotte Transit Center. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/giNJDse6pC
— Kristi O’Connor WBTV (@KristiOConnor_) April 2, 2021
The surveillance footage provided to Associated Press by Mark Sung, the store owner’s son, shows Woody-Silas entering the store, pulling a rack full of merchandise to the floor and swinging a street sign post in an attempt to break the glass on the store’s refrigerators. The man in red caught cheering the assailant on a minute into the video is reportedly Woody-Silas’ friend, according to The Charlotte Observer.
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“He’s a regular,” Sung said about the attacker, according to WBTV. “But that day he just walks in the store with a metal pole. No one sees it at first until he starts hitting things with it. … His friend came towards the end, stuck his head through the door and said ‘That’s what you get. That’s what you get you Chinese motherf***er.’” (RELATED: San Francisco Man Arrested After Allegedly Mimicking Gun With Hand, Threatening To ‘Shoot Chinese People’)
The attack comes in the wake of hate crimes targeting members of the Asian community. Anti-Asian hate crimes reported to police in America’s largest cities rose by 149% in 2020, compared to a 7% decline in overall hate crimes, according to a study by California State University.
In a Monday incident, a surveillance video captured a New York man kick a 65-year-old Asian woman to the ground and repeatedly stomp on her, saying, “f*** you, you don’t belong here.”