A Brooklyn man is facing assault and hate crime charges for allegedly stabbing a Jewish man after making antisemitic statements last week, according to the NYPD.
Armani Charles, 23, was taken into custody Monday evening after a weeklong search, according to the NYPD. Police said they connected him to the Dec. 16 attack on 35-year-old Elias Rosner – a stranger he reportedly confronted near the corner of Kingston Avenue and Lincoln Place in Crown Heights.
Charles allegedly made hateful statements about Jews and the Holocaust before pulling out a knife and stabbing Rosner in the chest, officials said. Rosner was treated at a local hospital and released, and the NYPD sent dozens of additional officers to the neighborhood to look for the suspect.
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, a spokesperson for the Chabad-Lubavitch community of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, said he was relieved when police officials called him Monday night to tell him Charles had turned himself in.
“ A lot of moms and dads are going to sleep tonight knowing that the streets are safer,” Behrman said, praising the NYPD for their work on the case. “He turned himself in ’cause he knew they were coming for him.”
Behrman said the Chabad community in Brooklyn – and around the world – is still reeling from the mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people, including a prominent local rabbi who had significant ties to Crown Heights.
Behrman said local leaders have to “unequivocally” call out hate and antisemitism, “because the minute you are unclear … the attackers and the haters sort of try to justify it.”
Besides assault and hate crime charges, Charles is also being charged with aggravated harassment and menacing, according to the NYPD. Behrman said he is confident that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office will take the case seriously.
Information for Charles’ attorney was not immediately available Tuesday morning as he waited to face a judge in Brooklyn criminal court. Police said he lives in East New York.
Rosner also did not immediately respond to a message asking for comment on the arrest.
