A Queens man who said he disliked Chinese people has been charged with hate crimes after robbing and assaulting two Chinese women, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The man, Key S. Lee, who is Korean, faces counts of robbery and assault as hate crimes, as well as other charges, in connection with two episodes in Flushing, Queens, the most recent on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Queens district attorney’s office.
“I don’t like the Chinese,” Mr. Lee, 34, said, according to prosecutors, “and I went to Flushing to look for Chinese people.”
Mr. Lee, himself a resident of Flushing, was ordered held on $1 million bail. His lawyer did not immediately respond to messages for comment.
“This kind of bigotry and racism is not acceptable in a civilized society,” the district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said in the statement announcing the charges.
In the first attack, shortly after midnight on Jan. 27, the authorities said, a woman noticed Mr. Lee standing on the corner of Avery Avenue and College Point Boulevard, smoking a cigarette, as she cleared snow off her car. When she opened a back door to her car, the authorities said, Mr. Lee rushed her and pushed her onto the back seat.
He closed the door, climbed on top of her and punched her in the face, before running away with her handbag, which had her credit card and $2,000 in cash, the authorities said.
Early Wednesday morning, prosecutors said, Mr. Lee followed a woman as she walked toward her apartment building near 35th Avenue and Leavitt Street and punched her several times; in that instance, he also robbed the woman of her purse, prosecutors said.
Her cellphone was in her purse, and using a tracking a device on the phone, the police found Mr. Lee at his home on Hawthorne Avenue, according to the criminal complaint.
After his arrest, prosecutors said, Mr. Lee told investigators that he had been driving home when the woman cut him off. He followed her in his car until she parked and then tailed her on foot.
Of the first attack, he told the authorities that he had been angry after an argument with his wife and that he had developed negative opinions of Chinese people when he was a cabdriver.
“I wanted to fight someone because the Chinese people were rude and smoking in the car,” Mr. Lee said, according to a criminal complaint. “I started walking and wanted to pick a fight.”
He said he encountered the woman clearing snow and the two of them made eye contact. “I became angrier and couldn’t take it anymore,” Mr. Lee said, according to the complaint. “I decided she’s the one. I started beating on her.”