A man who allegedly spat on and assaulted a transgender woman at a New York subway station has been charged with a hate crime.
Police arrested 26-year-old Pablo Valle in response to the January 24 incident, which took place while multimedia journalist Serena Daniari was waiting for a train in Manhattan at around 8pm.
Daniari, who is also a trans activist, was at the West 155th Street stop when Valle and a woman, who has not been identified, approached her and started asking a series of ‘unintelligible questions’.
Daniari broke down in tears in a video posted to Twitter after the assault:
The journalist had her headphones in at the time, so she took them out and asked Valle to repeat himself, at which point she said he ‘realised [she] was transgender’.
According to police, the 26-year-old then spat on Daniari and slapped her on the face. Valle’s female companion is said to have slapped Daniari’s iPhone out of her hand while making ‘derogatory remarks’. Thankfully Daniari was not seriously hurt during the incident.
Police released a photo of the couple and asked for the public’s help in tracking them down. Facial recognition technology helped police identify Valle, and the 26-year-old was apprehended on January 27.
Valle has been charged with aggravated harassment-hate crime in the first and second degrees, police announced today (January 31), as per the New York Post.
No other arrests have been made, though hopefully police will be able to track down the woman Valle was with at the time of the attack.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues, and want to speak to someone in confidence contact Mindline Trans+ on 0300 330 5468. The line is open Mondays and Fridays, 8 pm to midnight and is run by trans volunteers.
Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.