Orthodox Jewish man, 23, is shot with BB gun in drive-by shooting by three men on NYC street: Hate crimes soar 90%
An Orthodox Jewish man was shot in the head with a BB gun in a drive-by shooting by three men on a New York City street.
The NYPD's hate crime unit is now hunting for the three people who shot at the unidentified 23-year-old man at 10.30pm in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn on October 11.
Surveillance footage released by the NYPD on Thursday shows the man dressed in traditional Orthodox Jewish clothing walking down a street when he was approached by his three attackers in a dark-colored Hyundai Sonata with silver wheels.
One of the three men in the car fired an unknown projectile at the victim, believed to be a BB gun, which left him with a wound to the side of his head, officials reported.
The street surveillance footage obtained by the NYPD shows the victim fall to the ground after being hit by the projectile.
Stills from street surveillance footage shows an unidentified Jewish man, 23, being struck in the head with an unknown projectile on a Brooklyn street on October 11, 2021, by three men in a silver Hyundai
NYPD's hate crime taskforce is on the hunt for the three attackers who were in a gray Hyundai (pictured) at the time of the incident
In this latest incident, the victim was taken to a nearby hospital and was released shortly after.
The NYPD described the first individual being sought as a man between 20 and 30 years old, last seen wearing a blue sweater with beige pants. The second individual was described as a man between the ages of 20 and 30, last seen wearing a black hooded sweater, black pants, and yellow shoes. The third man was described as being between 20 and 30 years old, last seen wearing a red hooded sweater, black pants, and black and white sneakers.
This is the latest attack in New York City, which has seen a shocking 90% increase in hate crimes in the last year. In 2020, 229 hate crimes were reported while 435 have been reported so far this year, nearly double the amount.
The number of hate crimes across the United States in 2020 was the highest recorded since 2001, according to newly released data from the FBI, that also showed a 76 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes.
The report, released on Monday, found 8,263 criminal hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI in 2020, an increase of about 504 incidents since 2019. The spike comes as more local law enforcement agencies report crime incidents in their jurisdictions to the FBI compared to previous years.
In May, a Kippah-wearing Jewish man was attacked by a group of Palestinian protesters near Times Square.
Joseph Borgen was beaten by a group of five men yelling anti-Semitic epithets. He had been on his way to a pro-Israel demonstration on May 28th.
Video of the assault showed Borgen was left defenseless on the ground as he was battered by the angry mob outside of 1604 Broadway.
Waseem Awawdeh, 23, was the first man arrested over the violent assault and was charged with assault as a hate crime, gang assault, menacing, aggravated harassment as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.
When he appeared in court prosecutors say he told a jailer: 'If I could do it again, I would do it again. I have no problem doing it again.'
Police have arrested another man in relation to the attack, and are still looking for
Soaring hate crimes in New York City also saw a rise in attacks on Asian people.
In July, 58-year-old Asian woman Than Htwe died 11 days after being attacked in the New York City subway. Htwe was an immigrant from Myanmar, who was attacked by a man trying to steal her son's backpack at a Chinatown subway stop.
Htwe and her son, Kyaw Zaw Hein, 22, were walking up the steps at Canal Street station around 10.45am when David Robinson, 52, allegedly attacked them from behind, grabbing the son's backpack.
He yanked on Zaw Hein's backpack, then he tumbled backward, but as he began to fall, he reached for his mom, who stumbled down with him.
Joseph Borgen, 29, spoke to DailyMail.com one day after he was left bruised and battered by a group of pro-Palestinian men in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday
Video of the assault showed Borgen was left defenseless as he was kicked, punched, and beaten with crutches and flag poles by a mob of eight to 10 people
Both were knocked unconscious in the fall. When Zaw Hein awoke, he said his mother was 'lying on the floor with blood everywhere', according to a GoFundMe post.
Her alleged attacker, identified by police as 52-year-old David Robinson, is set to be charged with a hate crime.
According to the FBI's Hate Crime Statistics report, anti-Asian incidents significantly increased from 158 in 2019 to 279 in 2020, even though they only make up a small percentage of the 8,263 total hate crimes reported in 2020,
Than Htwe, 58, had moved to New York from Myanmar in 2018 to be closer to her son Kyaw Zaw Hein, 22
Overall, most of last year's hate crimes — nearly 50 percent of them — were against black people. Meanwhile, 55 percent of known perpetrators that started these hate crimes were white, while 21 percent were black or African American.
The FBI's 2020 data came from 15,138 law enforcement agencies around the country. Roughly half of all hate crime incidents disclosed were labeled as intimidation, while 27 percent were simple assault and nearly 18 percent were classified as aggravated assault (which the FBI categorizes as 'physical attacks intended to inflict severe or aggravated bodily injury').
After hate crimes that involved race, which made up the majority of the cases, 20 percent involved sexual orientation bias, 13.3 percent were biases related to religion, 2.7 percent involved gender identity bias (which means attacks against transgender and non-binary people), 1.4 percent involved disability bias, and 0.7 percent involved gender bias
Htwe (left) 58, and her son, Kyaw Zaw Hein, 22 were rushed to Bellevue Hospital on the morning of July 17, when Htwe underwent brain surgery. She died 11 days after being attacked
Relating to religion, it has been reported that nearly early one out of every four Jews in the U.S. has been subject of antisemitism. The data was released in a new report published on Monday by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which called for an end to what the group characterized as a 'severe problem' in the US.
The AJC's survey is based on interviews conducted by telephone and online from September 1 – October 3, 2021, among a nationally representative sample of 1,433 Jews aged 18 or older.
'Now is the time for American society to stand up and say 'enough is enough.' American Jews see antisemitism on the far right and the far left, among extremists acting in the name of Islam, and elsewhere throughout America,' the committee's CEO, David Harris, said in a statement.
An increase in violence between Israel and Hamas in the spring saw a rise in hate crimes against Judaism in the U.S. The Anti-Defamation League said it collected 193 reports of possible anti semitic violence in the week that violence began in Israel, a nearly 50 percent increase from the week prior. Hate crimes against Muslims also grew in the days after the violence in Gaza.
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