Source: Xinhua| 2018-10-09 12:20:00|Editor: ZX

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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- A man living in the U.S. state of Colorado was arrested and faced several felony charges for hitting a woman in a street, who he mistakenly thought was a Chinese immigrant.

The incident occurred on Thursday in the small city Boulder, 45 km northwest of Denver, when Jeffrey Karol Bonczyk suddenly pushed the victim down, kicked her several times and told her "Go back to China," the local website Boulder Patch reported on Monday.

The victim told Boulder police that Bonczyk became aggressive when he met her in a street because of her perceived race, though she told Bonczyk that she is of native descent, not Chinese.

The 48-year-old Bonczyk was arrested on the day of the incident on suspicion of committing a bias-motivated crime causing an injury, a Class 5 felony, and third-degree assault which is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

However, the report also said that Bonczyk told police the fight started because the victim "hates white people" and the victim had used a knife to cause a small visible cut in his chin.

Boulder is a city at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado. It was ranked as the happiest city in the United States in 2017 by the National Geographic magazine.

According to the 2010 census, there were 97,385 people in Boulder, with 88 percent White, 8.7 percent Hispanic or Latino and 4.7 percent Asian.