Hanukkah stabbing
Five wounded during celebration at rabbi’s house in N.Y.
MONSEY, N.Y. — When he was caught, the suspected intruder was still covered in the blood of the victims — five Hasidic Jews he is accused of stabbing wildly with a machete at a rabbi’s home while candles on the Hanukkah menorah still burned.
But the toll might have been worse had those assembled not fought back, hitting the intruder with pieces of furniture, forcing him to retreat.
He had concealed his face with a scarf when he burst into the home in this Hasidic community in the New York suburbs about 10 p.m. Saturday, police and witnesses said.
“At the beginning, he started wielding his machete back and forth, trying to hit everyone around,” said Josef Gluck, 32, who was at the home of the Hasidic rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, for the celebration of the seventh night of Hanukkah.
Gluck said the assailant screamed at him, “Hey you, I’ll get you” during the attack.
In terror, people fled the living room. Gluck recalled dashing into the kitchen, scooping up a small child and going down a back porch. Gluck returned, saw an older victim bleeding heavily and tried to confront the attacker.
“I grabbed an old antique coffee table, and I threw it at his face,” Gluck said.
The suspect, Grafton Thomas, 38, was later arrested in Harlem after police traced his license plate.
Police have not disclosed a motive, and much about Thomas remained a mystery Sunday. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo referred to the rampage as an “act of domestic terrorism.”
The violence further traumatized the Jewish community in the New York region, coming after a string of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks. It occurred less than a month after an anti-Semitic mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., left three people dead, including two Hasidic Jews.
The New York Police Department had said Friday that it was stepping up patrols in Jewish neighborhoods after a series of assaults against Jews last week.
The five victims of Saturday’s attack were taken to a hospital; by Sunday afternoon, one remained there with a skull fracture, officials said.
On Sunday, members of the Hasidic community said they took some solace in how people at the Hanukkah party did whatever they could to repel the attacker, with some throwing furniture at him.
“People inside fought to stop him,” said Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, who is friends with Rabbi Rottenberg
and said he spoke to those who were in the home. “It was very heroic of them. They didn’t just let this happen — they tried to defend themselves.”
After Thomas left the rabbi’s home, he tried to enter a synagogue next door, Congregation Netzach Yisroel, which Rottenberg leads. But people inside had heard the commotion and locked the door, so he left in a car.
Police who confronted and detained Thomas in Harlem on Saturday night found him covered with blood, officials said. The smell of bleach, possibly used to clean up the blood, wafted from his car.
Police then turned him over to authorities in Rockland County, which is northwest of New York City and where the attack took place. Harlem is about 30 miles from Monsey.
Rockland County has one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel.
Thomas, who prosecutors said they believe acted alone, is facing five counts of attempted murder and one count of first-degree burglary.
At his arraignment Sunday morning, Thomas, who was wearing a white prison suit, pleaded not guilty to all charges and offered no comment.
Jesse Dwyer, the mayor of Greenwood Lake, where Thomas is from, said the suspect often played basketball at a local park and did not appear troubled.
“People are very surprised,” he said. “There was no reason to believe that he was capable of doing anything like this.”
Gov. Cuomo said he had ordered the State Police hate crimes task force to investigate the stabbings.
“These are people who intend to create mass harm, mass violence,” he said at a news conference in Ramapo, the town that encompasses Monsey, after meeting with Rottenberg. “Just because they don’t come from another country doesn’t mean that they are not terrorists.”