Man in court for stabbing spree
WASHINGTON: A suspect appeared in a New York court on Sunday charged with five counts of attempted murder after a stabbing spree at a rabbi’s suburban house that left Hanukkah celebrants throwing furniture to defend themselves.
It was the latest in a spate of attacks on Jewish targets.
Grafton Thomas, 37, allegedly entered the property in Monsey, Rockland County, during celebrations on Saturday evening for the Jewish Hanukkah festival, knifing several people with a machete before fleeing.
US media reported that the suspect was covered in blood when officers detained him.
Mr Thomas was ordered held in custody after appearing in Ramapo Town Court, where he denied the charges.
The attack at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg was quickly condemned as another incident underscoring growing anti-Semitic violence in the United States.
President Donald Trump tweeted that Americans “must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism”.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene on Sunday that “these are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence — generate fear based on race, color, creed”.
The New York Times quoted Taleea Collins, a friend of the suspect, and his pastor Wendy Paige, as saying the suspect had struggled with mental illness.
No official details were released about the victims. Local media said one person was seriously injured.
Mr Thomas was reportedly arrested in his car about 50 kilometres away, two hours after the attack.
“Everyone was screaming and panicking and shouting ‘out out out.’ It was chaos,” Joseph Gluck, 30, told reporters.
“I threw a coffee table at the guy. Then he started to come after me.”
Last year a white supremacist shot dead 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue — the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the United States.
Earlier this month six people, including the two attackers, were killed in a shooting at a kosher deli in Jersey City, New Jersey.
A report in April from the AntiDefamation League stated that the number of anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 was close to the record of 2017, with 1,879 incidents.
As he did on Sunday, Mr Trump denounced anti-Semitism after previous attacks but critics blame him for stoking racial hatreds with comments about Muslims and Latin migrants that some white nationalists have taken as confirming their position.
Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are Jewish.