A Vancouver man has been charged for attacking a 92-year-old Asian man with dementia.
Last month, 50-year-old Jamie Allen Bezanson was caught on CCTV pushing the elderly man out of a convenience store and dragging him to the ground.
The victim suffered from severe dementia and his family had reported him missing an hour before the attack.
Staff had tried to help the lost man but the suspect intervened and started shouting racist abuse at him before throwing hip outside.
Sergeant Aaron Roed said on Thursday that the incident occurred in April but the police did not want to rush the investigation.
Police confirmed that the attack was racially motivated.
“This file was investigated as an assault which may have been related to hate and due to the sensitivity of this incident there is no rush to proceed,” Sgt. Roed said.
The BC Prosecution Service spokesperson Dan McLaughlin said in a statement, “Where offences are motivated by hate based on race, national or ethnic origin related to the COVID-19 pandemic there is a particular public interest in prosecuting those offences where the evidence supports the charges.”
It was recently revealed that 43% of Chinese Canadians have faced racist Coronavirus threats.
In related news, a former college basketball manager was caught on camera spitting at an Asian woman and using a racial slur in Calgary.
