Building a case against bias
DA likely to prosecute alleged triple homicide at
S’Bay restaurant as a hate crime, source says
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-year-old 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
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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, at
mic, 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
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