Anna Mochalova, 32, has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing a 26-year-old rabbi with a needle in Manhattan's Diamond District after following him, the New York Post reported Sunday evening. The woman also allegedly attacked another Jewish man about two hours earlier. It remains unclear whether she will face antisemitic hate crime charges in connection with the rabbi's stabbing.
According to police, in the first incident, Mochalova deliberately bumped into a 37-year-old man near 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. When he confronted her, she spoke in Russian and stabbed him in the arm with a sharp object. She was charged with several offenses, including assault as a hate crime. Both incidents are being investigated as suspected antisemitic attacks by the New York Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force.
Woman stabs Chabad rabbi in the streets of Manhattan
(Video: Security camera footage)
The rabbi told the New York Post that he believes he was targeted because he is visibly Jewish. A Chabad Hasid who identified himself only by his first name, Yosef, returned to helping people put on tefillin - or phylacteries - at a Manhattan stand just one day after the stabbing.
Yosef, 26, of Brooklyn, was attacked Wednesday at approximately 6 p.m. while walking along West 47th Street in Manhattan. According to the account, a woman followed him along the sidewalk before stabbing him in the lower right side of his back with an object believed to be a large syringe. He was left bleeding and taken to a hospital.
The suspect in a Shomrim security vide
(Photo: Shomrim New York)
Security camera footage circulated online shows the woman ignoring other pedestrians and approaching Yosef from behind as he tries to put a parked car between them. Earlier in the footage, the woman can also be seen pursuing another man who appeared visibly Jewish.
Chabad.org reported that Yosef travels daily from Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood to Midtown Manhattan. As part of his outreach work, he visits Jewish merchants and tradespeople in the Diamond District, helping them put on tefillin, encouraging them to observe additional Jewish commandments and studying Torah with them.