NY police seeking woman seen spitting on Jewish kids, threatening to kill them

NYPD investigating incident, in which woman told children outside Brooklyn synagogue that ‘Hitler should have killed you all,’ as a hate crime

By Luke Tress

You will receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

You will no longer receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

21 January 2022, 1:20 am

Edit

Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

A woman who allegedly spit on Jewish children in New York seen in security camera footage from January 14, 2022. (Screenshot/NYPD)

New York police said Wednesday they were looking for a woman who approached Jewish children, made antisemitic comments and spit on them outside a synagogue in Brooklyn.

“Hitler should have killed you all,” she said, according to the children’s father. “I’ll kill you and know where you live.”

The NYPD said she was wanted for aggravated harassment for the incident that took place on January 14. It indicated the incident was being investigated as a hate crime.

Video released by police showed the woman approaching the children on a sidewalk outside a synagogue in the Marine Park neighborhood. She briefly confronts them, then walks back in the direction she came from.

The three children, ages 2, 7 and 8, were siblings. The woman spit in the face of the 8-year-old boy.

The NYPD said the suspect was a white woman in her 20s.

https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/r3Q0Un4j-U4CTA3JQ

The children’s father, Aryeh Fried, told CBS New York, “I would hope she understands the severity of what she did.”

“To do it to anybody is obviously problematic, but for an adult to do it to a child is just beyond crazy,” Fried said.

He said the woman yelled at the children as she was walking past them, and the 8-year-old told her he would protect his little sister, causing her to turn back to them and accost them.

Area residents put up posters around the neighborhood with the woman’s picture seeking information.

Jews are targeted in hate crimes in New York City more than any other group, year after year, according to official statistics.

Most of the attacks are physical assaults against identifiably Jewish New Yorkers and vandalism against Jewish institutions.

The NYPD counts 536 hate crimes against Jews since 2019 out of 1,210 total incidents, by far the highest tally of any group.

In the US, Jews are the leading victims of religiously-motivated hate crimes, according to numbers published by the FBI.

Jewish leaders over the past week have urged authorities to redouble efforts to fight antisemitism, after a gunman stormed a Texas synagogue and took congregants and a rabbi hostage for some 12 hours on Saturday.