‘Nothing is safe here’: Chinese Filipino man wants to leave California after violent attack in S.F.

DannyYuChang-SFChroniclePhotos
Danny Yu Chang, 59, who was beaten in an unprovoked attack on Market Street in San Francisco on Monday, stands outside his home in Vallejo. Yu Chang and his wife are planning to move out of California in search of a safer place to live as violent crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise throughout the country.

Rachel Swan. March 17, 2021
Updated: March 18, 2021 6:51 p.m.

Danny Yu Chang was walking through San Francisco’s Financial District, clutching a packaged lunch from Trader Joe’s, when an assailant struck him from behind.

The blows were swift and brutal, Yu Chang recalled Wednesday afternoon, two days after a man knocked him unconscious at Market and Montgomery streets.

He was sitting at home, his face fractured, hands scraped, eyelids bruised and swollen shut, when news came of the mass shooting that killed eight people — including six women of Asian descent — near Atlanta. The act served as a stark punctuation in a year that saw an alarming rise in anti-Asian bias and violence.

While grassroots forces have been walking the streets promoting community safety in several major city and large public rallies protesting Anti-Asian Violence had been held, the work to defeat the violence being directed towards Asian elders has a long ways to go. It is a cultural, political and economic competition problem that will not be resolved easily. In the meantime, groups like Neighborhood Safety Companions (NSC) will continue their work and efforts to build unity in the community against these attacks must be redoubled.

“Nothing is safe here in California,” Yu Chang said. “Especially for the old people.”

A day after the attack, Yu Chang set up a page on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, asking supporters to help raise money so he and his wife can move out of state. That evening, police announced the arrest of 32-year-old Jorge Devis-Milton in connection with the battery of Yu Chang and a stabbing half an hour earlier, of a 64-year-old white man at the 16th Street Mission BART Station.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin charged Devis-Milton with six felonies Wednesday, including aggravated mayhem and battery with serious bodily injury.

Despite the arrest, Yu Chang remains shaken. He is unable to see out of his left eye and is afraid to walk outside, even on his own tree-lined street in a Solano County suburb.