Manhattan prosecutors charged a woman with hate crimes over the weekend after she was accused of stabbing two Jewish men with a syringe and needle in Midtown.
Court documents said Anna Mochalova, 32, ran up on a man wearing traditional Hasidic Jewish garb in the Diamond District, cornered him against a car and jabbed him with a needle.
Minutes later, she targeted a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke just a few blocks away and stabbed him with the syringe and needle, according to court records.
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The court filing said Ms. Mochalova told the second victim, “Go away from here. I have a gun. I’m going to kill you.”
The filing said she gestured toward the inside of her coat, which the victim took as her insinuating she had a firearm there.
Both victims, who were not injected with any substance, survived the attacks, police said.
Court documents said Ms. Mochalova approached a third man and asked if he was Jewish, but the man said he was Muslim and she walked away.
The stabbing spree happened Wednesday, but New York Police Department investigators did not track down Ms. Mochalova until Saturday.
Ms. Mochalova was arraigned Sunday on charges of assault as a hate crime, menacing as a hate crime and weapons and harassment offenses. She is scheduled to return to court on Thursday.
The attacks stand out since New York City’s increase in hate crimes in 2026 comes amid an overall drop in violent crime.
“While major crime figures may be plummeting, we know that even a single crime in our city is one crime too many,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “There continue to be a number of areas of concern, with a focus on hate crimes.”
NYPD officials reported 463 hate crime incidents this year, compared to 410 last year — a nearly 13% increase.
Antisemitic hate crimes accounted for nearly 53% of the hate crimes recorded by the city, which officials said are up slightly this year.
Noteworthy incidents include July stabbings in which a suspect is accused of yelling “Allahu Akbar” before stabbing an Asian man and a kippah-wearing Jewish man with a screwdriver.
Authorities charged Raul Morales, 51, in the attack in which he allegedly said “Justice for Islam.”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the city has seen the fewest killings, shootings and shooting victims in its recorded history through the end of September.
Police officials said the roughly 7% drop in major crimes — such as homicides, robberies, weapons assaults and burglaries — in the first nine months of the year was the city’s largest year-to-date reduction in crime in the last 17 years.
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