A 15-year-old boy has been found guilty of carrying out a racist assault on a Singaporean student while ranting about coronavirus.
The attack on Jonathan Mok on Oxford Street in February left the 24-year-old with a bloodied and bruised face that required surgery.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of causing racially-aggravated grievous bodily harm (GBH) at Highbury Corner Youth Court on Monday.
He has been bailed and will be sentenced on January 27.
He had previously admitted wounding or inflicting GBH but denied it was racially motivated, telling his trial in December he had not mentioned coronavirus and was not a racist.
But the court heard that several people had witnessed the word “disease” or “coronavirus” from a few metres away.
Chair of the bench Lesley Ward said the evidence showed the teenager’s version of events was “not plausible” and could not be believed.
Ward said the attack had been “unprovoked and racially motivated”.
Mok had written on Facebook that he was set upon by a group of men and a woman, one of whom made a remark about coronavirus.
In his account of the assault, Mok described how, as he turned to face the group, one of the men said: “Don’t you dare look at me,” before launching an attack.
The student said: “All of a sudden, the first punch was swung at my face and took me by surprise. When I was still shocked by the first hit, the guy delivered the second sucker punch.
“By then, a few passers-by had stopped and one of them tried to reason with them that four on one was not fair.
“The attacker’s friend tried to swing a kick at me as I was explaining to the passer-by that I hadn’t done anything at all.
“I tried to react in self-defence but couldn’t do anything substantial because I was still recovering from a broken finger in my master hand.
“The guy who tried to kick me then said: ‘I don’t want your coronavirus in my country’, before swinging another sucker punch at me, which resulted in my face exploding with blood from my nose, where the blood was splattered all across the pavement.”
Mok told the trial: “My interpretation was he believed that I was the one who brought the coronavirus to this country, or people who look like me.
“I was angry [...] it was quite shocking because I never expected to face this sort of incident, I have never heard this kind of comment the whole time while studying in London.”
The teenager had previously denied kicking Mok or hearing any mention of coronavirus in his group of friends.
He had told the court that “no one said anything towards Mr Mok about his ethnicity”.
He had also said he believed coronavirus was “fake” at the time of the incident.