A young Orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed in New York City by an attacker who was reportedly yelling “Free Palestine.”
The incident occurred early on Saturday morning in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
The attacker, Vincent Sumpter, reportedly yelled “Do you want to die?” after hurling anti-Semitic statements at the victim, Yechiel Michel Dabrowskin.
Sumpter, 22, was charged with second-degree assault as a hate crime for stabbing Dabrowskin.
The attack occurred around the corner from the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Yaacov Behrman, a spokesman for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, issued a statement in a post on X, saying:
“The perpetrator, a black male in his early 20s, shouted ‘Free Palestine’ and, after an exchange of words with the victim, allegedly asked, ‘Do you want to die?’ before stabbing him.”
I can confirm that a hate crime stabbing occurred early this morning in Crown Heights, around 2 a.m., near Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, close to Chabad Headquarters.
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) August 11, 2024
The perpetrator, a Black male in his early 20s, shouted "Free Palestine" and, after an exchange of words…
“When you look at the footage you can see that me and a friend of mine were trying to distance him from us,” Dabrowskin stated.
“All of a sudden he pulled out a knife.
“The knife went very close to my heart.
“We all tackled him and we all called the police.”
Security footage shows the chilling moment Sumpter lunged at his victims with several violent stabbing motions.
Dabrowskin and his friend were walking along the sidewalk when Sumpter appeared to block their path before launching the attack.
WATCH:
A friend of the victim told CBS News:
“The guy started to say, ‘Free Palestine,’ and stuff like that…
“Two of my friends came a little bit closer and told him to go away.
“And after a couple of minutes, the guy said, like, ‘You wanna die, what’s going on?’…
“We said nobody wants to die, go away, we’re going to call the police…
“It was like a second – took a knife, opened it like that, and stabbed him by the stomach.”
Mark Treyger, chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, wrote:
“This abhorrent and abominable attack on a young Jewish person in Brooklyn because of his identity should not and cannot be seen in isolation.”
Treyger then posted a list of the numerous anti-Semitic acts that have taken place recently in New York.
He noted the chants of “Zionists are not welcome here” at college campuses, the “Hunting for Jews” mobs on the city’s subways, and “throwing smoke bombs at a Nova exhibit in Lower Manhattan where young people were trying to turn their pain into purpose after witnessing their peers slaughtered and abducted” by Hamas on October 7.
