An NYPD car on patrol. Photo: Reuters / Lucas Jackson.
Police in New York City have arrested a teenage male in connection with an attack on a Jewish man in Brooklyn last Friday night.
The 15-year-old was arrested on Thursday. He is now facing hate crime and assault charges. CCTV from the scene of the attack allegedly showed him punching a 24-year-old Orthodox Jewish man wearing traditional Hasidic clothing.
The attack occurred at around 10:30pm on Stockton Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Medics attended the scene in the aftermath to treat the victim for injuries to his face.
The assault on the Jewish man was one of at least three antisemitic incidents in Brooklyn last weekend. Minutes before the attack on the 24-year-old Jewish man, another assault was reported on nearby Myrtle Street — in this case, the victim was a 44-year-old Jewish man. Police are attempting to establish whether the same teen was also responsible for that attack.
And on Sunday morning, multiple yeshiva school buses parked in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn were discovered to have been vandalized with swastika graffiti.
The latest hate crime statistics released by the NYPD show an increase of 275 percent in reported hate crimes against Jewish people in New York. There were 15 antisemitic incidents reported in January compared with four in the same month of 2021.
