Suni Lee, an American gymnast and Olympic gold medalist, claimed she was pepper-sprayed last month while out with friends in Los Angeles.
PopSugar's Lee, the Hmong American who represented the U.S. at the Olympics, said that she was waiting for a ride and was accosted by a car with people shouting racist slurs.
Lee claims that she was in a group of Asian friends and one of her passengers spraying pepper spray on her arm before the car left.
Lee said that she was mad but couldn't control their actions because they walked off. "I didn’t do anything to them and, having the reputation, it’s so difficult because I didn’t want to do any that could get me in trouble." It just happened."
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian incidents in America have increased sharply. Stop AAPI Hate is a national coalition which has been collecting data on racially motivated attacks in relation to the pandemic. It received over 9,000 incident reports between March 19, 2020 and June 2019.
Lee, 18 years old, won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in the individual all around.
This story used information from The Associated Press.
