Moment a man with a MACHETE scares off robbers attacking his elderly Asian parents in California

An Oakland man armed with a machete scared off robbers who had targeted his elderly Asian parents outside of their home. 

Dramatic surveillance video shows the man running down the steps of the building holding the massive knife.

In surveillance footage shot from another angle, the four robbers can be seen running across a road and jumping into a car away from the machete-wielding man.

The man said that his parents had just returned from grocery shopping when they were approached by the group of men on their front porch at around 16:30 on Monday, March 29.

In the footage, the robbers can be seen accosting the elderly couple before their son bursts onto the scene. 

An Oakland man armed with a machete scared off robbers who had targeted his elderly Asian parents outside of their home. Dramatic surveillance video shows the man running down the steps of the building holding the massive knife (circled)

He told KGO that one of the men had grabbed a gold chain from his mother’s neck while others reached into his father’s pocket to steal his cell phone and keys.

‘I heard my mom screaming and that’s when I ran out. If I hadn’t come out they would have done a lot worse,’ the man, who did not want to be named, said.

He said he had been changing when he heard the commotion outside, which is why he ran out barefoot, but managed to grab a machete in time.

The man said that his parents had just returned from grocery shopping when they were approached by the group of men on their front porch at around 16:30 on Monday, March 29. In the footage, the robbers can be seen accosting the elderly couple before their son bursts onto the scene

It is unclear whether the attack was racially motivated but it comes amid a rise in robberies and assaults of Asian Americans in Oakland and elsewhere. 

Elderly people have been the subject of many of these attacks.

KGO reported that the March 29 robbery and assault came just one day before a Vietnamese couple who lived less than 10 minutes away was tied up and robbed in front of their seven-year-old daughter. 

The victims of both incidents told KGO that they wanted the Oakland Police to take specific action and were unhappy about the response times and ‘amount of care taken’ in both cases.

The father who was attacked on his porch said he would like to see the culprits ‘locked away for 10 years minimum.’ 

Racist incidents targeting Asian Americans have skyrocketed in the last year. 

The four robbers flee from the machete-wielding man and jump into a parked car to escape

StopAAPIHate, a coalition addressing anti-Asian hate amid the pandemic, said it had received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents between March 19, 2020 and February 28, 2021.

According to figures from a report by the group, the majority of incidents happened at places of business, with the second most common site being public streets. 

Sixty-eight per cent of incidents reported involved verbal harassment, while incidents of coughing/spitting, physical assault, online harassment and avoidance were also recorded.

Incidents were reported in all 50 states and affected individuals from a variety of races and ethnicities, the majority of whom were of Chinese descent.

Activists and the Biden administration have drawn a link between former President Donald Trump’s repeated use of phrases like ‘China virus’ and ‘kung flu’ to describe Covid-19 and the increasingly open hostility to Asian Americans.