Intruder screamed ‘I’ll get you’ during machete attack on Jews
N.Y. governor decries ‘act of domestic terrorism’ at rabbi’s home
MONSEY, N.Y. — When he was caught, the intruder was still covered in the blood of his victims: five Hasidic Jews he had stabbed 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 at about 10 p.m. Saturday, the 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.
Mr. Gluck said the assailant screamed at him, “Hey you, I’ll get you” during the attack.
In terror, people fled the living room. Mr. Gluck recalled dashing into the kitchen, scooping up a small child and then going down a back porch. Mr. Gluck returned, saw an older victim bleeding heavily and then tried to confront the attacker.
“I grabbed an old antique coffee table and I threw it at his face,” Mr. Gluck said.
The suspect, Grafton Thomas, 38, was later arrested in Harlem after police traced his license plate.
The police have not disclosed a motive, and much about Mr. Thomas remained a mystery on 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 already said on 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 the hospital and 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.
“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 Mr. Thomas left the rabbi’s home, he tried to enter a synagogue next door, Congregation Netzach Yisroel, which is led by Rabbi Rottenberg.
But people inside had heard the commotion and locked the door, so Mr. Thomas left in a car.
The Police Department officers who confronted and detained Mr. 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.
The police then turned him over to the 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.
Mr. Thomas, who prosecutors said they believed acted alone, is facing five counts of attempted murder and one count of first degree burglary.
At his arraignment on Sunday morning, Mr. Thomas, who was wearing a white prison suit, pleaded not guilty to all charges and offered no comment.
Some neighbors said Mr. Thomas, who is from Greenwood Lake, N.Y., about 20 miles from Monsey, was an unassuming neighbor.
Ron Griffith, 55, said he saw Mr. Thomas once or twice a week, walking down the street to a nearby convenience store and coming back with food. He saw him as recently as last week. He was always alone, but seemed friendly, often giving a smile or a curt greeting.
“A smile, a ‘hello.’ We never spoke,” he said. “He’d walk to town, go back home.”
The mayor of Greenwood Lake, Jesse Dwyer, said Mr. Thomas often played basketball at a local park and did not appear troubled.
“People are very surprised to find out that this individual is responsible for such horrific actions,” he said. “There was no reason to believe that he was capable of doing anything like this.”
Mr. 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 Rabbi Rottenberg. “Just because they don’t come from another country doesn’t mean that they are not terrorists.”
On Sunday, photos of the attack’s aftermath circulated on social media and in WhatsApp groups that showed blood smeared across the floor of the rabbi’s home and on the wooden stage where the Hanukkah ceremony had taken place.
Yossi Gestetner, a cofounder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, a group that covers New York and New Jersey, said one of the victims was the rabbi’s son.