John Jefferson
A New York City man is facing a hate crime charge Monday after allegedly yelling “Free Palestine!” before stabbing an individual outside of a synagogue over the weekend in Brooklyn, police say.
The New York City Police Department tells Fox News Digital that the incident involving 22-year-old suspect Vincent Sumpter happened around 2 a.m. early Saturday near the Chabad Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood.
Police say a 33-year-old victim was “slashed in the torso” following a verbal dispute in which the younger suspect said the phrase “Free Palestine.” The victim was taken to a local hospital in stable condition, while Sumpter was arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime and assault causing serious physical injury.
Yaacov Behrman, a rabbi and spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, told the New York Times that the victim was Jewish.
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“This is obviously a very serious incident, and there has been a lot of antisemitic rhetoric,” Behrman said to the newspaper. “I’m concerned that unless this rhetoric stops, it’s going to become more common, sadly.”
Surveillance footage taken from the scene shows two men in white shirts interacting with a third individual. That individual then lunges at the other men, forcing them to retreat.
“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,” a person identified as the victim’s friend told CBS New York, noting they had just finished a Friday night Shabbat meal when the stabbing took place.
“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,” he added.
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The witness told CBS New York that residents in the community then chased down the suspect until police arrived.
The victim told Israel’s Kan 11 News that “I had internal bleeding but thank God I had a miracle,” according to the New York Post.
Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, wrote on X following the stabbing that “This is a dangerous escalation of the current climate we are in and it should outrage every New Yorker because it is an attack on every New Yorker.
“This abhorrent and abominable attack on a young Jewish person in Brooklyn because of his identity should not and cannot be seen in isolation,” he added.
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