A Jewish man was slashed by a suspect screaming ‘Free Palestine’ steps away from a local synagogue, cops said.
The suspect, 22-year-old Vincent Sumpter, was charged with assault as a hate crime as a result, after leaving 33-year-old Yechiel Dabrowskin hospitalized following the heated altercation on the streets of Brooklyn.
It happened early Saturday morning, as the Israeli who had come to the US to study religion walked home from a Shabbos meal near the Chabad Headquarters in Crown Heights.
It was around 2 am when the suspect was filmed approaching the victim right there on Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, reportedly screaming ‘Do you want to die?’ along with the aforementioned rallying cry.
The footage, taken from nearby surveillance cameras, shows the suspect lunge at a group of men with Dabrowskin, before slashing him with a knife. Witnesses were able to then chase him down, cops said – detaining him until they arrived.
‘It’s very, very painful,’ Dabrowskin told Kan 11 News from his hospital bed Sunday as he recovers. ‘I had internal bleeding but thank God I had a miracle.’
He went on to recall how he had been part of a procession that sat down for a peaceful dinner near the synagogue where he currently studies just hours before.
That’s when the trouble started, he said – as Sumpter, who is from the not-so-nearby neighborhood of Brownsville, is now set to be arraigned, cops said.
‘At 2 a.m. they were saying that there was a person outside who was threatening children and teenagers,’ Dabrowskin told the Israeli news station.
‘I heard him say, ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘You want to die?” he recalled.
‘I asked him to leave.’
The footage shows the rest, with Sumpter seen stabbing Yechiel before fleeing the scene.
First, though, the Jewish man can be seen shielding his acquaintances from the attacker, as chaos quickly ensues.
Another angle of the encounter seemingly secured by a bystander shows the suspect seemingly drawing his weapon, before slashing Dabrowskin and running off.
He did not make it far, however, as onlookers in the heavily Jewish neighborhood honed in on his location and held him down until officers arrived to make an arrest.
Dabrowskin, meanwhile, was taken to Maimonides Medical Center where is expected to recover from his wounds – as his attacker remains in custody.
‘When you look at the footage you can see that me and a friend of mine were trying to distance him from us,’ Dabrowskin told Kan 11 of the clip now being used to potentially convict the alleged anti-Semite in his hate crime case.
‘All of a sudden he pulled out a knife,’ he recalled, not mentioning his own heroics.
‘The knife went very close to my heart. We all tackled him and we all called the police.’
He was brought to the hospital in stable condition, police later said – as local authorities prepare to arraign the suspect in criminal court at some point Monday.
This is a developing story; please check back for updates.