By Aidan Gardiner
NEW YORK CITY — An interracial couple was assaulted outside a Long Island City eatery Saturday morning and police were probing the incident as a possible hate crime, cops said.
Billie and Jacob James-Vogel had just spent their evening at Shi, an Asian fusion restaurant on Center Boulevard, when a group of men attacked them about 1:45 a.m., according to reports and the NYPD.
The husband and wife told reporters that during the attack, the assailants shouted racist and homophobic slurs.
"When I think about the slurs, the N-word and the F-word, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts," Billie James-Vogel told NY1. "It breaks my heart."
Cops couldn't confirm that account, but said that the Hate Crimes Task Force was investigating the incident.
In the assault, Jacob James-Vogel's eye was injured and his wife was knocked to the ground and broke her toe, cops said.
"I try to get them off my husband," Billie James-Vogel said. "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."
Police arrested Nikolaos Katsos, 28, and charged him with assault and harassment, an NYPD spokesman said. They are still looking for other suspects.
Other suspects remained at large Monday morning, he added.