Grafton Thomas has been arrested over the attack. Photo / AP
Grafton Thomas has been arrested over the attack. Photo / AP
A man barged into a rabbi's home with a long knife and stabbed five people Saturday night in New York state, officials and witnesses say, shattering Hanukkah celebrations and renewing fears of attacks on America's Jewish community.
The suspect in custody, 37-year-old Grafton E. Thomas of Greenwood Lake, New York, faces five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary, according to police.
Officials have yet to announce a motive in the stabbing in Monsey, but state leaders were quick to call it domestic terrorism and to denounce anti-Semitic attacks in the wake of other violence against members of the Jewish community.
People who were at the scene of the violence, which occurred in a town about 30 miles north of New York City, told reporters of a weapon nearly the size of a broomstick and a perpetrator with his face obscured by a scarf who ran past the man answering the door, stabbed guests as people tried to fend him off and then fled.
The victims, all Hasidic Jews, were taken to hospitals, according to the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council in Hudson Valley, which said the stabbings occurred at the home of Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg just before 10 p.m.
One victim remains in critical condition with wounds to the head, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. Rottenberg's son was among the victims but is recovering, Cuomo said.
The suspect was stopped in his vehicle and arrested by New York City police at about midnight in Harlem, then transferred to Ramapo, a town near Monsey, where he will be arraigned Sunday morning, officials said.
Ramapo police officers escort Grafton Thomas from Ramapo Town Hall to a police vehicle. Photo / AP
Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said authorities tracked down the suspect thanks to "critical" information from someone who wrote down the license plate number for the vehicle and gave it to police.
The governor said the state police's hate crime task force will investigate and denounced the attack - the state's 13th anti-Semitic incident in the past few weeks, he said - as "intolerance meets ignorance meets illegality."
"This is an intolerant time in this country," he said Sunday. "We see anger, we see hatred exploding. It is an American cancer in the body politic."
Police at the scene of the attack. Photo / AP
New York City leaders said Friday that police would increase patrols in several neighborhoods in light of increasing anti-Semitic violence. Earlier this month, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said suspects in a shooting at a kosher deli in Jersey City "held views that reflected hatred of the Jewish people, as well as the hatred of law enforcement."
"Let me be clear: anti-Semitism and bigotry of any kind are repugnant to our values of inclusion and diversity and we have absolutely zero tolerance for such acts of hate," Cuomo said in a statement.
On Sunday, he renewed calls for New York to become the first state in the country with a law on domestic terrorism. A proposal he advocated earlier this year would treat mass shootings motivated by attributes such as race and national origins as punishable by as much as life in prison without parole, similar to terrorist crimes.
Advocacy groups and local leaders joined the governor in calling for action. Former New York Assembly member Dov Hikind said the state's Jewish residents are "sick and tired" of tweets condemning anti-Semitism and want concrete steps to prevent more violence. Appearing alongside Hikind, Yossi Gestetner - founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council - called for heightened security and publicizing the consequences of such attacks.
Orthodox Jewish people listen to N.Y. state Assemblyman Dov Hikind speak in Monsey, N.Y. Photo / AP
"When will enough be enough?" the Anti-Defamation League echoed in a statement, saying that a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the New York and New Jersey area over the past week make it "abundantly clear" that "the Jewish community needs greater protection."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also condemned Saturday's attack in Monsey.
The attack shook a county where almost one-third of the population is Jewish and where the Orthodox community has grown to thousands of families in recent years, according to Jewish groups.
Leaders around the state have expressed concern about anti-Semitism in the county, after an advertisement this August said County Legislator Aron Wieder - an Orthodox Jew - is "plotting a takeover" that threatens "our way of life." The video overlaid the words "Our Families" on a photo of a white, non-Orthodox couple and their children posing on a front lawn.
The video was "the very definition of discrimination," Cuomo said at the time.
Rockland County Executive Ed Day praised law enforcement for an "immediate and effective" response to a "heinous crime" Saturday.
"Getting such a horrific call in the midst of a local holiday celebration is a stark reminder that even in a community as good and serene as ours, evil can visit us," Day said in a statement. "Violence of any kind will not be tolerated here in Rockland."
