Oakland Police Department
- A man was arrested on assault charges after verbally assaulting and pepper-spraying an Asian gas station owner.
- An argument ensued after the suspect tried to pay for his gas in all coins, KGO reported.
- The incident came as hate crimes against Asian Americans have been on the rise.
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A man was arrested after he verbally assaulted and pepper-sprayed a gas station owner in Oakland, California, local news outlet KGO reported.
The gas station owner, Cwell, who did not provide his last name and is of Asian descent, told KGO the man got into an argument with the gas station's cashier because he was trying to pay for his gas in all coins on Thursday. The cashier told the man that he could not take the money in its current state because the till would not fit the dozens of quarters the man presented at the register.
When Cwell intervened, he said the suspect shouted racists remarks at him.
"He just started mouthing off … 'You should go back to China,' like that," Cwell told KGO. "We were just bursting out laughing because it was so unbelievable."
Cwell also claimed that the man "ends up reversing his car at me," but police have not confirmed the exact details of the incident and the moment was not captured on surveillance footage.
The Oakland Police Department announced Friday that they arrested the man on assault charges, an image of whom was shared in a screenshot from surveillance footage.
"Today the case was presented to the @AlamedaCountyDA for review," the department said in a statement posted on Facebook. "OPD denounces all incidents involving hate. This is an ongoing investigation no further details will be released at this time."
Cwell said Thursday that he followed the man out of the store to get his license plate number, and the man again shouted racist remarks at him and pepper-sprayed him.
"The guy had pulled out his pepper spray and he had shot my face, arms," he told KGO. "I ended up going to the ER to get taken care of."
Representatives from the Oakland Police Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The incident comes a few days after Robert Aaron Long was arrested and charged after killing eight people at three spas in the Atlanta area. Six of the eight victims were identified as Asian women.
While police have not yet ruled out the possibility of a hate crime, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said on Wednesday the crimes may have not been racially motivated, and that Long blamed a sex addiction for the attacks.
There has been a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans since the pandemic started. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center that has been tracking cases from March to December of last year, said they received "over 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate" crimes.