The family of an elderly man — who has been assaulted multiple times on the crime-riddled streets of San Francisco — has decided America is “too dangerous” for their loved one and is sending him back to his home country of China after decades of living in the States.
“It’s too dangerous here,” Jing Liao told the San Francisco Standard on Monday after he and his family booked his father, Rongxin Liao, 87, a one-way ticket back to his home city of Guangzhou, Guangdong.
“Public safety situation in San Francisco has become worse and worse,” Liao added, revealing his father had been brutally attacked multiple times while in San Francisco.
Rongxin Liao was the victim of one high-profile case in 2020 when security footage caught a deranged man jump-kicking him as he sat in his walker waiting for the bus on a street in the depreciating city.
The Chinese immigrant, who speaks little English, had appeared in court multiple times to ask the judge for a harsher sentence for his attacker.
His attacker, Eric Ramos-Hernandez, was only jailed for seven months, then transferred to a mental health clinic, only to be later released for at-home treatment, the Standard reported.
Rongxin Liao suffered severe head injuries as a result of that attack.
The grandfather was attacked again on Oct. 1, 2023, while he was walking down Market Street in Downtown San Francisco, his son revealed.
A police report obtained by the outlet shows an 86-year-old Asian male matching Rongxin Liao’s description was sucker punched that day and transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Rongxin Liao himself also told the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily on Monday that he was attacked in the city seven years ago while walking to church.
The 87-year-old said he had been beaten unconscious by an unknown attacker and woke up in the emergency room of St. Francis Memorial Hospital with a partly fractured hand that required eight stitches.
Despite being questioned by police multiple times, his attacker was never found, and the case was dropped.
“I don’t want to be a drag to my son here,” Rongxin Liao told Sing Tao Daily. “I don’t want him to worry about me all the time.”
The family decided to send their elder back so he could live out the remainder of his days in peace with Jing Liao’s brother back in China.
Liao had a farewell dinner with some of his elder friends in Chinatown on Sunday to say his goodbyes after 24 years of living in America.
Before he leaves America this Saturday, he will revisit the hospital to check on his eye injuries stemming from the last attack.
Assaults across San Francisco dropped by 4.9% in 2023, according to the latest crime statistics.
In 2022, however, assaults in the city had jumped a staggering 8.8% in comparison to 2021.
Following his 2020 assault, the video of the violent attack and members of Rongxin Liao’s family would appear in a recall campaign advertisement against then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
The ad, which ran in May 2022, claimed that since Boudin was elected as DA, hate crimes against Asian Americans have risen 567%.
Boudin was ousted from his role back in June 2022 after fed-up San Francisco voters chose to recall the soft-on-crime DA following surges in shameless shoplifting, car break-ins, and rampant, open-air drug dealing.
