A video of a white woman shouting racist abuse and kicking an Asian woman on a New York subway train has gone viral on social media.
Anna Lushchinskaya had to be restrained by a fellow passenger and was the subject of a citizen's arrest last Tuesday morning when she repeatedly abused the unidentified woman standing across from her.
The incident, filmed by Juan Ayala, allegedly began when Lushchinskaya bumped into the 24-year-old woman on the train.
Rather than apologise, the 40-year-old began yelling expletives, telling the fellow rider to "f**k off" several times and slapping her arm.
On camera, Lushchinskaya then takes her sunglasses and gloves off, puts them in her bag and ties her hair back, seemingly preparing for a fight.
She then begins kicking the woman; when she is restrained by passengers, she is heard crying: "You're not letting me hit her back, she's hitting my stuff! You're f**king retarded!"
The footage, posted to Twitter, shows Lushchinskaya striking the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, several times with her umbrella and her keys, and again kicking her.
"She's not even fighting you back," one person is heard saying, while another later tells her "Your white privilege ain't working over here."
Lushchinskaya is seen spitting in the direction of the victim before yelling more profanity and a racial slur.
When Ayala, the man filming the video, steps in, she asks: "What are you, her attorney? F***ing Mohammed."
"B****, I'm Dominican," he shoots back. "I just had a bacon, egg and cheese yesterday. Literally the whole world is laughing at you."
Lushchinskaya then knocks his phone out of his hand and spits on him.
A post from Ayala on Twitter showed him making a citizen's arrest. The NYPD transit police confirmed on Wednesday that Lushchinskaya was arrested and charged with felony assault.
According to CNN, this is Lushchinskaya's second arrest this year for a subway altercation, with both incidents taking place at the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn.
In June, she was arrested for allegedly pepper spraying a Hispanic man and woman, according to DCPI detective Sophia Mason. She was charged with harassment, menacing with a weapon and attempted assault.
Speaking to WABC, the victim claimed she felt grateful the woman didn't have a weapon like a gun or a knife "because it could have got a lot worse."
"I'm lucky that people were on the train who were helping me, especially the first Asian guy who stood in front of me right away because he wasn't recording," she said. "He just stood in front of me to help me, because I know other people were recording, but their recording didn't do anything until later on when it escalated."
Ayala added that the victim appeared extremely non-threatening and he had no idea what she could have done to provoke the attack.
"She had a bow on her head," he told the New York Daily News. "You can't get any more innocent than that. That's, like, a staple of innocence."
