Amid rising anti-Semitism across the country, an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed in the chest over the weekend by a criminal shouting “Free Palestine.”
While walking down the street in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York at around 2:00 a.m., 33-year-old Yechiel Michel Dabrowskin was stabbed in the chest by 22-year-old Vincent Sumpter — who reportedly screamed “Free Palestine” during the attack and asked the Orthodox Jewish man, “Do you want to die?”
Crown Heights Brooklyn – 22 year old antisemite Vincent Sumpter goes on stabbing spree screaming “Free Palestine”, injures one Jewish man.
Video here:pic.twitter.com/dzXDP5H1Wa
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 11, 2024
Sumpter has been charged with second-degree assault and a hate crime for the attack, which occurred just around the corner from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement headquarters. Yaacov Behrman, who runs PR for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, revealed in a post on X that residents of the community chased down the attacker and held him until police arrived at the scene.
“The perpetrator, a Black male in his early 20s, shouted ‘Free Palestine’ and, after an exchange of words with the victim, allegedly asked, ‘Do you want to die?’ before stabbing him,” Behrman wrote in a post on X, adding that Dabrowskin “was transported to the hospital and is expected to recover due to the location of the stabbing and the quick response of paramedics.”
I can confirm that a hate crime stabbing occurred early this morning in Crown Heights, around 2 a.m., near Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue, close to Chabad Headquarters.
The perpetrator, a Black male in his early 20s, shouted "Free Palestine" and, after an exchange of words…
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) August 11, 2024
In a statement to the New York Post, Dabrowskin detailed the terrifying moments before the attack.
“When you look at the footage you can see that me and a friend of mine were trying to distance him from us,” the Orthodox Jewish victim said. “All of a sudden he pulled out a knife. The knife went very close to my heart. We all tackled him and we all called the police.”
A friend of the victim also spoke with CBS News about the incident, stating: “The guy started to say, ‘Free Palestine,’ and stuff like that… Two of my friends came a little bit closer and told him to go away. And after a couple of minutes, the guy said, like, ‘You wanna die, what’s going on?’… We said nobody wants to die, go away, we’re going to call the police… It was like a second – took a knife, opened it like that, and stabbed him by the stomach.”
Jewish Community Relations Council of New York chief executive Mark Treyger highlighted this incident and several others in a post on X discussing the rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic violence.
“This abhorrent and abominable attack on a young Jewish person in Brooklyn because of his identity should not and cannot be seen in isolation,” he wrote, adding a list of several anti-Semitic attacks in New York, including college campus chants of “Zionists are not welcome here,” people “Hunting for Jews” on New York City subways, and “throwing smoke bombs at a Nova exhibit in Lower Manhattan where young people were trying to turn their pain into purpose after witnessing their peers slaughtered and abducted” in Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
I pray for this young man’s full and speedy recovery and I thank NYPD, Hatzalah, and the volunteers who rushed to his rescue.
This is a dangerous escalation of the current climate we are in and it should outrage every New Yorker because it is an attack on every New Yorker.… https://t.co/yTB2ZiZXhe
— Mark Treyger 🍎 (@MarkTreyger718) August 11, 2024
