LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- A man living in the U.S. state of Colorado was arrested and faces several felony charges for hitting a woman on the street, whom he mistakenly took as a Chinese immigrant.
According to a report of local Boulder Patch website on Monday, the incident took place last Thursday in Boulder, some 45 kilometers northwest of Denver, when the man, Jeffrey Karol Bonczyk, suddenly pushed the victim down to the ground, kicked her several times.
The victim told Boulder police that Bonczyk became aggressive when he met her on the street because of her perceived race. The victim said she told Bonczyk that she is of native descent, not Chinese, and Bonczyk told her that "I'm the first one here. I'm the white one. I'm the Viking."
The 48-year-old Bonczyk was arrested Thursday on suspicion of committing a bias-motivated crime causing an injury, a Class 5 felony, and third-degree assault, a Class 1 misdemeanor.
However, Bonczyk told police the fight started because the victim "hates white people." He stated that the victim had used a knife to cause a small cut visible on his chin, according to the report.
Boulder is a city at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado. It was ranked as the happiest city in the United States in 2017 by National Geographic magazine.
As of the 2010 census, there were 97,385 people in Boulder. Eighty-eight percent of the population is White, 8.7 percent Hispanic or Latino and 4.7 percent Asian.
