Baseball Bat Attacker First Accused Asian Muni Driver of Being COVID-19 Positive

A Muni operator was attacked with a half-size baseball bat after asking three young men to wear masks aboard a Muni bus in the South of Market neighborhood, Wednesday.

But while that incident was widely reported, perhaps less known is when the bus driver asked the young men to wear a mask, one of them spat at the driver and accused the Asian bus operator of having the coronavirus.

That’s according to Transport Workers Union Local 250-A President Roger Marenco, who told KQED that after the assault bus drivers may be more reluctant to enforce mask rules.

It's the latest incident in a spike of verbal and physical assaults against Asian people amid the coronavirus pandemic, which advocacy groups have begun to track since March.

"When he asked them to keep their face coverings on, they said 'they didn't have to' and said the operator 'probably had' (coronavirus) because he was Asian," Marenco said.

The bus operator pulled over at Division and 11th Streets, in South of Market, and opened a side panel on the bus. The bus driver told them to stop and went back on the bus. That's when one of the young men boarded with a baseball bat and struck the driver.

When the driver managed to grab hold of the bat, the man then punched the driver twice in the face.

"They spit at him, they hit him with a bat, they fractured one of his fingers," Marenco said. "What does that do for the operator? It puts them in fear."

Verbal and physical attacks against Asian people have spiked during the pandemic, according to a coalition including the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University, which launched a project called Stop AAPI Hate.

In California between  March 19 and June 30, Stop AAPI Hate tracked 81 physical assaults against Asian people, 64 incidents suggesting "potential civil rights violations" including workplace discrimination and 90 incidents of discrimination against "elderly" Asian Americans.

— Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez (@FitztheReporter)