The New York Police Department (NYPD) said that it was investigating a Wednesday knife attack where an assailant slashed a Hasidic couple and their toddler.
The incident is under investigation as a possible hate crime, the NYPD told The Daily Caller. (RELATED: ‘F*** You, You Don’t Belong Here’: 65-Year-Old Asian Woman Brutally Attacked While On Her Way To Church)
Officers found a family with knife injuries when they arrived at the scene, according to the NYPD. A 22-year-old man was cut in the head, his 23-year-old wife had a wound on the lip and their 1-year-old son was slashed in the chin. Officers also found a knife at the crime scene.
The Orthodox Jewish family from Belgium was walking through Battery Park when the incident occurred, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported.
A video of the incident, initially obtained Thursday by the New York Post, shows the white-hoodie-wearing suspect first walk past the couple, who were pushing their toddler in a stroller around 5:50 p.m. The suspect then turns around and attacks the couple, slashing the man in the head, striking the woman in the lip and cutting the child’s face.
Video – UPDATE: Disturbing footage shows the moment a madman slashes a Hasidic couple and their 1-year-old daughter during an unprovoked attack yesterday in Lower Manhattan. pic.twitter.com/S0nDy8tVzu
— The J News (@TheJNews) April 1, 2021
Police have arrested 30-year-old Darryl Jones in connection with the attack. (RELATED: Swastika Found Defacing Jewish Cemetery In The Same Town As Auschwitz)
Jones faces several charges, namely three counts of assault, one count of assault on a person under seven, three counts of unlawful possession of a weapon and one count of possessing a controlled substance, DCPI spokesperson Detective Sophia Mason told The Daily Caller.
Jones had been released from prison in March after spending years in jail. He had been imprisoned after pleading guilty to attempted murder in a case related to an Aug. 2011 Upper East Side robbery, the Post reported.
According to New York’s 2019 criminal justice report, “Anti-Jewish crimes accounted for 53.5 percent (331 of 619) of all hate crime incidents.”