Woman Charged With Hate Crimes in Attacks on Two Jewish Men in Midtown Manhattan
A woman accused of assaulting two men in New York City was charged with hate crimes connected to those incidents, according to police and court records. Anna Mochalova, 32, faces two counts of second-degree assault as a hate crime, one count of second-degree menacing as a hate crime, two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and two counts of second-degree aggravated harassment.
According to CNN, citing the criminal complaint, the two men say they were injured on October 21 in Midtown Manhattan. The first victim, walking on West 47th Street near Fifth Avenue in traditional Hasidic Jewish clothing, was followed by the defendant, who cornered him against a car even as he crossed the street; he said she was speaking to him "in a foreign language" — the complaint does not say what language, or whether he understood her — and he then felt a sharp, stinging sensation in his lower back and said he suffered a laceration along with bleeding.
About five minutes later, a man wearing a yarmulke was waiting to cross the street at West 45th Street and Sixth Avenue. He told police he speaks Russian and said he felt the alleged assailant push him from behind before feeling a painful stinging sensation in his forearm. He said he heard his alleged attacker say to him in Russian something that substantively resembled the words, "Run away from here. I have a gun, I am going to shoot you," and that she then motioned toward the inside of her jacket in what he interpreted to be an attempt to reference a firearm. The complaint also says she approached another man and asked him if he was Jewish; when he said he was Muslim, she walked away. It is unclear from the complaint whether she approached the Muslim man before or after she approached the second Jewish man.
Mochalova was arraigned Sunday and bail was set at $50,000. She is due back in court Thursday. Legal Aid Society attorney Lila Carpenter is representing Mochalova in court, and CNN has reached out to her office for comment. New York Police Department statistics released this month show confirmed hate crimes in New York City are up almost 13% year to date, with 463 incidents this year compared to 410 last year, and antisemitic crimes account for 52.9% of those incidents. In the third quarter, confirmed hate crimes totalled 125 in 2026 compared to 111 in 2025, while anti-Jewish hate crimes declined to 59 from 68 in the same period.
(GSM compiled from CNN's October 25 report citing police and court records; the allegations are as stated in the complaint and the case is pending.)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：纽约曼哈顿钻石区西47街与第六大道街口（资料图）。图片来源：Tdorante10／Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0
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