Interracial Couple Attacked after Visiting Restaurant; Owner Wouldn’t Let them Back in for Help

When you’re celebrating your birthday, you expect that to be a happy occasion.  But we live in a world of ignorance, and that’s what a couple witnessed first hand.

Billie and Jacob James-Vogel were out celebrating her 40th birthday on Saturday night in Queens, NY.  When leaving the Shi restaurant with a gay friend, the couple says that they were attacked by three men who were yelling racial and homophobic slurs during the beating.

“When I think about the slurs, the N-word and the F-word, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.” Billie James-Vogel said. “It breaks my heart.”

Jacob said that he was hit in the face several times and thrown to the ground.  Billie was also knocked down, where she broke her toe and hit her head.

“I fell down. I was on my right side, so I was protecting my face with my arm,” he said. “I’m sore here, and my face was pummeled on the left side.”.

Billie said that she reacted when seeing the other men attacking her husband.  But she wasn’t strong enough to fight off the attackers.

“I see these guys rushing my husband, on top of my husband,” she said. “I try to get them off of my husband. One of them grabs me and throws me to the ground. The back of my head bounces off the concrete sidewalk, and I black out.”

Making matters worse, the couple says that when they went back to the Shi restaurant for help, the owners turned them away at the door.  Shih Lee, who runs the place, said that police were called, but they didn’t let them back in because they feared for the safety of other patrons.  But some would say that they were being cowardly and unhelpful.

“We couldn’t assess the situation,” Lee said. “The police had already been called, so we’d rather wait for them to come first.”

Adding to the couple’s nightmare, after the cops left, one of their attackers came back, pretending to be a police officer.   He actually tried to get into the ambulance with the victims.

“The EMT drivers didn’t let him into the ambulance,” Jacob James-Vogel said. “They then followed him and called the police."

Police are reporting that Nikolaos Katsos was arrested for the incident.  He was charged with assault and harassment.