12
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, FEB. 3, 2019
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The man suspected of brutally
slaughtering three Sheepshead
Bay restaurant workers with a
hammer will likely face hatecrime
charges in addition to the
three counts of murder authorities
slapped him with, according
to a law-enforcement source.
The source — who requested
anonymity due to the ongoing investigation
— told this newspaper
that District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
will likely prosecute the alleged
murders as hate crimes,
hours after locals and pols rallied
on Jan. 25 to demand 34-year-old
Arthur Martunovich face bigotry
charges for purportedly killing
50-year-old Tsz Pun, his 34-yearold
nephew Fufai Pun, and 60-
year-old Thang Ng , with the tool.
“Let’s be clear, this was a racial
hate crime, plain and simple,”
Councilwoman Margaret Chin
(D-Manhattan) said at the rally
outside the Emmons Avenue eatery
at E. 21st Street she co-hosted
with Councilman Chaim Deutsch
(D-Sheepshead Bay). “For that
reason, I call upon District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez to stand with
our community and prosecute
these murders as a hate crime.”
The Councilwoman from the
distant isle claimed that Martunovich’s
alleged killing spree
was motivated by racism because
he watched a fi lm depicting Asian
men abusing women, which convinced
the suspect — whom a Police
Department spokeswoman
previously described as emotionally
disturbed — that he was a
savior.
“He entered the restaurant motivated
by a racial stereotype of
gender relations in my community,
with a goal to massacre, believing
himself to be sort of a savior,
the attacker bludgeoned these
restaurant workers while they
were doing their job,” Chin said.
Gonzalez’s spokesman Oren Yaniv
could not confi rm Chin’s allegations,
however, citing offi cials’
ongoing investigation.
Martunovich has yet to be arraigned
because he is still in a
psych ward, according to Yaniv,
who said he will undergo a psychiatric
evaluation to determine
if he is fi t to stand trial. And if authorities
deem Martunovich unfi t
to immediately go before a court,
he will be sent to a mental institution
until he is able, Yaniv said.
Cops arrested Martunovich,
who lives in Manhattan Beach,
on Jan. 16, the day after he allegedly
assaulted the men with the
hammer, immediately killing the
younger Pun, with the elder Pun
and Ng dying from injuries sustained
in the attack on Jan. 24 and
Jan. 18 respectively.
The incident left locals — and
the Asian-American community
in particular — reeling, according
to one Bensonhurst resident,
who called herself a patron of
the restaurant and said she knew
one of the victims, but declined to
name him.
“It was really scary because
I actually went here a few times
when I was young, and it hit
close to home for me,” said Mina
Zheng.
And the fact that the grisly
incident occurred inside an eatery
made it even more devastating,
Zheng said, because many
Asian-Americans have family or
friends who work in the restaurant
business.
“The fact is, because we are
Asian, we know what it’s like having
relatives working in a restaurant.
It’s a very common job in the
community, and to see something
like that happen in a place where
it’s so unlikely to hear about is really
shocking,” she said.
Zheng’s friend, who lives a
few blocks away from the site of
the alleged triple homicide, said
news of the attack sent shock
waves through the local community,
many of whose Asian residents
spread the news immediately
via the Chinese messaging
app WeChat.
“I was saddened because all of
our parents sent me some WeChat
news about it,” said Brian Sa,
whose parents also used to work
at a restaurant. “They told me,
‘Hey, the Seaport Buffet just got
attacked,’ and it’s a couple blocks
down from me so they were asking,
‘Are you ok?’ ”
The news that Gonzalez will
likely prosecute the incident as a
bigoted crime follows his recent
formation of a dedicated Hate
Crimes Bureau, which the top
prosecutor created following a recent
rise in biased attacks among
vulnerable communities across
the borough.
COMMUNITY UNITY: Sheepshead Bay
Councilman Chaim Deutsch co-hosted
a Jan. 25 rally with Manhattan Councilwoman
Margaret Chin, where the
pols demanded the man accused of
murdering three Asian employees of
an Emmons Avenue restaurant also be
slapped with hate-crime charges.
Photo by Steve Solomonson
Building a case against bias
DA likely to prosecute alleged triple homicide at
S’Bay restaurant as a hate crime, source says