NYC women buying up pepper spray after brutal Chinatown murder leaves them feeling 'unsafe'

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Women in New York City are stocking up on pepper spray across the city after a woman was brutally murdered in her own home over the weekend by a homeless man.

Nearly a dozen women in the nation’s largest city told the New York Post that they no longer feel safe in New York City and five businesses told the paper that they’ve noticed an uptick in females buying pepper spray. 

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"It has become a popular item, yes," a staffer at F&J Police Equipment told the New York Post about pepper spray sales. "We’ve had some women, also some men who were buying it for their wives or girlfriends or daughters." 

Police say that late Sunday, thirty five-year-old Christina Yuna Lee was stalked by a homeless man on her way home from a party in New Jersey where she was then stabbed to death over forty times and found naked from the waist up in her bathtub. 

"Manhattan used to be an oasis, now I’m looking over my shoulder to make sure I’m not being followed," Elise Hsu, a 34-year-old real estate agent who lives in Chinatown, told the New York Post following news of the crime. 

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"Every day the homeless walk around here," Phoebe Tan, 50, told the New York Post. "I was so scared to find out about this woman getting murdered. I have pepper spray in the store to protect myself."

Several other women reiterated the concerns of Hsu and Tan with some saying they now carry around a "rape whistle" and that they don’t feel safe traveling in the city’s subway system. 

A female New York Post reporter who was conducting interviews with women across the city says she was herself confronted by a homeless man who yelled in her face and pulled down his pants while she was conducting an interview.

New York City saw a 38.5% surge in overall crime in January, according to data released by the NYPD.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks addresses the press about the scene where NYPD officers were shot while responding to a domestic violence call in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, U.S., January 21, 2022.  REUTERS/Dieu-Nalio Chery (Reuters)

The surge was driven by a 91.5% increase in thefts of vehicles, a 58.1% increase in grand larceny, a 33.1% increase in robberies, a 26.7% increase in rapes, a 12.3% increase in felony assaults, and a 7.5% increase in burglaries. 

The troubling January crime data comes after murders in New York City rose in 2021 compared to 2020. Additionally, hate crimes in New York City nearly doubled in 2021 and race-based attacks against the Asian community rose 343%.