Auckland bus attack: 39-year-old woman arrested in ‘hate-motivated crime’

Police have arrested a 39-year-old woman after the attack on a schoolboy with a metal rod on an Auckland bus.

Acting detective senior sergeant James Mapp said police located and arrested the woman this morning in relation to the assault on a bus in Pakuranga last month.

A 39-year-old woman will appear in Manukau District Court tomorrow charged with wounding with intent to wound.

Mapp said police will allege this was a hate-motivated crime.

On Friday, police released images of the woman who left a 16-year-old boy with facial injuries and missing teeth after the attack.

Racial slurs hurled at schoolboy before attack

The Chinese-New Zealand schoolboy was allegedly randomly attacked by a woman on an Auckland bus about 9am on June 28.

The woman started yelling racial slurs at the boy before attacking him with a metal rod, unprovoked, he claimed.

He lost three teeth and had two more damaged in the attack.

“I was taking the bus to Panmure, and just past Pakuranga Plaza, a woman started verbally abusing me and then immediately started to physically abuse me,” the schoolboy told the Herald.

“I was just listening to music, scrolling my phone, and then it happened. She just stood up and hit me.”