Two teenage girls from New York have been arrested and charged with hate crimes for allegedly assaulting a 57-year-old woman while making “anti-white” statements.
The 15-year-old and 16-year-old girls were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the July 9 alleged incident, which took place aboard a New York City bus in Queens. The girls were not named by police as they are minors.
The dispute began around 6:50 p.m. when the Q53 bus was in the area of Jamaica Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard. Three teens approached the 57-year-old woman, identified by the New York Post as Jill LeCroix, a grandmother of five, and got into a verbal argument.
The girls hit LeCroix with an unknown object, causing a laceration and bleeding, and fled the scene.
According to CBS New York, investigators say one of the girls yelled, “I hate white people. I hate the way they talk.”
LeCroix told the New York Post that the girls asked if she was a Trump supporter.
“Before they hit me, the girl with the green hair said, ‘You probably like Trump! Don’t you?’ LeCroix recounted. “I said, ‘I love him.’”
LeCroix was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Centre, where she required three staples to her head, according to police.
Working on a tip, the NYPD located two girls who are now in custody, but are still looking for the third person involved. The teenagers were charged with assault as a hate crime and aggravated harassment as a hate crime.
Hate crimes in New York City have increased by 76 per cent as of April, when compared with that time period last year, according to data from the NYPD’s hate crimes task force.
So far in 2022, there have been 35 hate crimes committed against Black people in New York, 51 against Asian people and 149 against Jewish people. Only one other hate crime has been recorded against a white person this year, according to the NYPD Hate Crimes Dashboard.