Monsey, NY: Five People Stabbed During Hanukkah Celebration, Suspect Arrested
“the suspect – identified as Grafton E. Thomas, 37, of Greenwood Lake, New York – will face five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary”
As Mary blogged earlier this week, New York City has seen an alarming rise in anti-Semitic attacks. The most recent is a horrifying machete attack in Monsey, a town about an hour north of New York City, that left five people wounded.
The attack occurred during a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home. New York governor Andrew Cuomo has called the incident an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Authorities say five people were stabbed at a rabbi’s home late Saturday night in Monsey, New York, the latest and most violent in a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the greater New York City area in the last few days.
Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said the suspected attacker entered the residence around 10 p.m. armed with a knife. Saturday was the seventh night of Hanukkah and was being widely observed in Monsey, a hamlet that is home to thousands of Orthodox Jews. There were as many as 70 people in the rabbi’s home at the time of the attack.
The Hasidic organization Chabad, citing sources in the community and witnesses at the scene, said someone in the home threw a table at the attacker, chasing him off. He then allegedly tried to gain access to the synagogue next door, but the occupants barricaded themselves inside. The assailant then fled the scene in a silver sedan, according to witnesses.
The suspect has been apprehended, though it’s not yet clear how long he will be detained.
BREAKING: suspect wanted in connection with Monsey stabbing arrested by NYPD in 32 Precinct. @lohud pic.twitter.com/NgEZLUyQJc
— Chris Eberhart (@ChrisEberhart2) December 29, 2019
The man accused of entering the home of a New York rabbi and stabbing five people with a machete in a horrifying anti-Semitic attack on Saturday night was taken into police custody hours after the attack.
Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said on Sunday the suspect – identified as Grafton E. Thomas, 37, of Greenwood Lake, New York – will face five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary.
Police said Thomas entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, a suburb north of New York City, during a Hanukkah celebration – the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks that including beatings of Jewish people in the streets of New York City and a massacre at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, N.J.
Police said Thomas fled the scene of the stabbing but was later captured in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
Watch the report:
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Comments
He used a machete? Speaks volumes as to the real motivation here.
If you are stabbing people with a machete, you are unclear on the concept of stabbing.
More likely, NBC4 is unclear on “what is a machete?”.
Or “what is stabbing”.
De Blasio and Cuomo have been letting this problem metastasize for far too long.
Are kidding? They’re a strong reason for it.
It wasn’t to perform a b’ris.
One look at that photo tells me that clearly this man was a White Supremacist.
It’s shocking the media didn’t use his baby pictures, as they did trayon martin’s.
He was once arrested for punching a police horse. Shades of Blazing Saddles.
At least no one died.
“Yet….”
I understand the need for metrics. Still, there are wounded and the continuing message of terror persists. It will be interesting to find out (maybe) why he chose this place. Any local “mosques” in the area? Is he Muslim or Black Muslim? If so, did he pick it up in prison? Was this a jihad to atone for an impure lifestyle?
Surprising that the officials didn’t immediately go to “mental illness” as the cause….yet.
I had a report at LAPD last year that concerned a black adult man throwing rocks and yelling anti-Semitic taunts at a 16-year-old Jewish boy.
I got the officers a case number as they waited so they could book evidence. Reading the report and looking at the descriptors I saw that the black man was something like 5-8″ and average build. The 16-year-old Jewish boy was something like 6-2″ 220 pounds.
When I asked one of the officers why the Jewish boy didn’t kick the man’s ass, the officer said, “Yeah, he’s a big kid. But he’s also a really sweet kid.”
It’s great to be sweet … I’m all for it. Until you come across those who are filled with hate who see it as being synonymous with being an easy target.
Now, in this case, I think the kid did the right thing by trying to avoid the man and call the police, even though being built like a linebacker probably would’ve made it a one-sided fight.
But as they say in martial arts training, when it comes to a street fight, you want to do everything you can to avoid physical confrontation until it’s unavoidable. There are too many variables (hidden weapons, friends of the opponent nearby of whom you’re not aware, etc.)
If I were a Jew living in an area where random attacks are increasing, I’d carry a gun. Just brandishing it might be enough.
The media being basically AWOL on this issue is inexcusable.
Compare this to the wall-to-wall coverage they gave to the Jussie Smolett hate hoax. That story was obviously, ludicrously fake from the beginning to anyone with an ounce of intelligence.
I have a brother who was 5’ll’ and about 200lbs, and very strong, when he got whipped at the beach, one fine day.
Being a sweet kid is a handicap, regardless of size and even strength.
has nothing to do with ‘sweet’, if he had fought back, and beat the other into the ground, who do you think would get the blame.
Or, he could have calmly wrestled the attacker until he had his face in the sand (Step 1). At that point, he’d other choices.
But it’s important to get to Step 1.
That’s very hard. Often the other person will force you to make a choice. Suppose they try to put out your eyes with their fingers, or something like that. Either you knock them out (temporarily or permanently, maybe you don’t control this) or you take personal risk.
To the media, this is good: it fits the plan.
Unfortunately NY and NJ operate as if the second amendment doesn’t apply to them.
They don’t want it to: they want to step into the crisis as saviors, and infringe on freedom in the process.
It’s always been the plan.
They want the rioters to be uncontrollable. All are supposed to be enriched by them and unable to keep a distance.
Leftism is an ideology of hate. That’s what it is at it’s core when you strip everything else about it away. If you’re a leftist everyone else is too blame for your troubles in the world and you hate them for it. This is where the violence the leftism causes comes from.
Jewish people are the favorite target for that hatred as well.
This is a hate crime pure and simple. He wasn’t looking to steal. He was looking to kill people at that location simply because they were of the Jewish faith.
Yes, leftism is an ideology of hate, but we don’t know that this thug is a leftist. After all, there are plenty of black Jew-haters who are not in any way socialists.
The odds of him not being a leftist is really small. He might not go around calling himself a leftist but I’d bet if you talked to him long enough about politics his own politics would scream leftism and support for leftist causes.
I have my doubts: after all, black nationalists often share nothing with the left aside from their politically correct racism.
“Yes, leftism is an ideology of hate, but we don’t know that this thug is a leftist.”
Yeah, sure, this guy is certainly a bible-thumping Christian, a republican.
Nobody suggested that. pst314 is correct that we have no clue yet about his political views, if any, and there’s no reason to suppose he is a leftist, since we know there are many black antisemites who are not of the left.
It’s at least possible that he’s a “Black Hebrew”, like the two who shot up the kosher grocery in Jersey City.
You mean the group that yelled at the Covington Catholic students during the march for life?
Yeah, they seem real conservative.
“You mean the group that yelled at the Covington Catholic students during the march for life?
Yeah, they seem real conservative.”
Liberal/conservative is not the only axis on which all politics can be organized.
healthguyfsu, nobody suggested they were conservative in the political sense. But they are definitely not of the left.
P.S. I see this in so many reports and it drives me crazy.
Anytime a crime involves a vehicle, when any danger has passed, focus on getting the license plate number and memorizing it instantly.
I know that the surprise of being the victim of, or being witness to a crime, especially a violent crime against person, can put most people in a momentary state of shock.
But focus on getting the license plate of any involved vehicle.
It’s amazing how many reports I’ve read where victims and witnesses have had the ability to get a license plate, but failed to do so due to the shock of the incident.
A license plate can be put into the system as a felony vehicle, etc., almost instantaneously and many police vehicles are equipped with license plate scanners that alert them to plates in the system, e.g., stolen vehicles, felony vehicles, wanted-person vehicles, etc.
Get the plate!
I’ve made it a habit of memorizing the plate of any vehicle I come across that gives me a bad vibe for any reason just in case my intuition is right.
Hey, it can help you to keep up your memory in old age!
Beter if you have a camera take pictures.
Even remembering the first or last digits can help a lot: That, plus a description, can allow the police to narrow down the search to a single vehicle.
Great advice. It is by the way an excellent set up question for a Boy (or Girl) Scout board of review. Ask what they do immediately after witnessing an accident with injuries. They won’t forget it (if they miss it–which they mostly will do saying their first response is to give first aid).
And always carry a notebook & pencil stub, which you can use faster than a phone (and keying in your phone’s access code may cause you to forget that license plate number.)
And if you do have a smart phone, learn how to use all the features that may prove useful in an emergency.
I too have a habit of writing down plate numbers of “dicey” looking vehicles in the neighborhood on receipts in the wallet. two people sitting in a car are possibly porch thieves, so stopping, writing down plate on scrap of paper and letting them see you do it, is a pretty good hint to move on.
I am trying to teach my son the art of situational awareness. As I tell him, the first 98-99% of self defense does not involve a gun. yeah, I know this sounds a lot like profiling, but a) I don’t care and b) profiling is called that because 98% of the time it is spot-on. It would be a lot harder if thugs didn’t self-identify so well.
Just to be clear, I don’t go around memorizing license plates all day.
A couple summers ago there was a shabby motor home with an Ohio license plate suddenly parked on our street for about a week. I saw the (what I took to be) owner of the vehicle one day and he looked sketchy as well.
I made a mental note of the plate and wrote it down when I got home.
If some serious crime were to suddenly occur, I would’ve had a potential solid lead right away. The plate could be queried in the system to get the registered owner’s name. That person could then be queried for any criminal history.
Partial plates cannot be entered into the system. You need the entire plate or almost all of it (whereby, for example, if you couldn’t remember or were unclear on the last digit, you could run the plate repeatedly, using each digit, 0 through 9, and then run the criminal history on the owner of any of those vehicles matching the description of the vehicle in question.
Another scenario: I see reports everyday of a phenomenon I don’t remember having ever heard of until fairly recently. Cars parking in front of a business, and a group of young perpetrators all running into the store, grabbing as much merchandise as they can, and then fleeing in the vehicle. It’s not your old-fashioned shoplifting.
It’s brazen and ruthless and any employee(s) is usually overwhelmed by the number of perps and the sheer speed with which the crime is carried out. Many businesses have a policy preventing their employees from trying to physically stop this. They are often knocked to the floor if they try to impede the perps’ caper.
So, for example, if I were walking down the street and in front of me a car stopped and a bunch of young people got out and ran into a store, I would make a mental note of the plate.
It might be something innocent, but if it isn’t, giving the police that plate in a timely manner means there’s a good chance the perps will be caught.
You might ask why wouldn’t it be a sure thing they are caught?
Because a lot of the time they are using a rental vehicle which they’ve rented with a false ID, or identity theft.
Time is of the essence before they return the vehicle to the rental agency.
Also, I wouldn’t recommend trying to physically intervene in such a situation.
It’s a property crime. It isn’t worth risking your life. Leave it to the police.
Sorry, you see what in so many reports?
In this case at least some of the victims did exactly what you suggested, and that is how the perp was caught.
I see many cases in investigative reports, not arrest reports, where victims and/or witnesses were close to the suspect(s) vehicle, but in the shock and short time of occurrence, did not think to make note of the license plate.
They can often give a description of the vehicle as to its approximate year of production and provide its make, model and color–all of which most people can do without consciously focusing their attention–but, unsurprisingly, fail to focus on memorizing the plate.
A good description of a vehicle can be attained and given with almost no thought. Getting a license plate involves focusing through the shock and surprise.
You can’t enter nor query a vehicle into the system by make, model, color, etc. Only by plate and VIN.
Thus is the obama/jarrett/sharpton/jackson/lee/wwaters legacy, and it sits right at their feet.
Unbelievably, our communist mayor is still blaming Trump!
When the media is unwilling to face stark reality, but instead adopts ideology as being real, you can get away with such nonsense.
This violence sits squarely in the lap of obama, shaprton, jarrett, pelosi and the like.
It sits particularly square in the lap of that racist pig michelle obama. And a racist pig she is:
Michelle Obama Demonizes White People:
https://wtaq.com/blogs/the-john-muir-show/20190/michelle-obama-demonizes-white-people/
Racist morons like michelle obama don’t understand that but for “white people,” they’d still be slaves. They should also remember – or even know – African and Islamic nations were the original slavers of black people.
Those crazy white people:
The story of how our national anthem came to be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaxGNQE5ZLA
A non-white using a knife. It will be forgotten tomorrow as it doesn’t fit the white supremacist nor the gun control now narratives.
Yet we already have the call for weapons controls (somewhere there is a call for Gun Control), stopping “white supremacist” anti-semitic terror, and it’s all Trump’s fault anyway (the latter is already being pushed).
Farrakan and the Black Hebrews anyone? Like that other recent NJ restaraunt? And maybe this?
I’m certain that Jew-hating bigots and Muslim supremacists, the vile Tlaib and Omar, will rush to condemn this latest “white supremacist” attack on American Jews, posthaste.
Much closer to home, where’s AOC condemning this? She shoots off her mouth about so much else.
And now brain dead stupid moron DumpyCraps are ridiculously blaming president trump for the evil this horrible human cockroach is responsible for.
Only goes to show you that DumpyCraps are the dumbest most brain dead fktarded humans on the planet.