Cops investigate man's attack on children as an antisemitic hate crime

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, N.Y. (PIX11) -- He violently attacked a group of kids playing on a sidewalk, and now detectives from the Hate Crime Task Force of the NYPD are trying to track down a man whose facial image has been captured on surveillance video.

It comes after another surveillance video recorded the attack, just after sundown last Sunday.

It happened in the 100 block of Franklin Avenue, where a lot of kids play every day on the sidewalk, in front of their homes. 

They were doing just that at around 8:50 p.m., police said, when a man who investigators described as between 18 and 20 years old was on a bike, and stopped next to a group of about a dozen kids.

He told the children to get off the sidewalk, according to law enforcement sources, and then he left. Moments later, though, the man came back, and approached two of the older kids, who are boys, ages 13 and 11. He beat and stomped on them. 

"He came in with a purpose," said the father of one of the children who'd been there, "to harm them."  

The children playing on the sidewalk are from Orthodox Jewish families, and the NYPD is looking into what had happened as a potential antisemitic hate crime. 

While that investigation is underway, and the attacker is still at large, the mother of one of the children who'd been in the group, but who declined to give her name, said that there's added concern for families in the area, especially for the children. 

"They're pretty traumatized," she said, and then went on to describe the attack. "Just out of nowhere, he just, you know?"

Until the attacker is caught, she said, she and other parents will be keeping a tighter watch over the children. "I wouldn't let them out, once it gets dark," she said. "It's not safe."

It happened last Sunday, but now, police have found surveillance images showing the face of the man who they say carried out the attack. It left two boys in an ambulance, treated for serious bruises, according to their family members. 

Those relatives pointed out that somebody knows the person who carried out the crime. They had a message for anyone with information.

"You must help," said Joseph Weinstock, "and call the police [so they can] catch him, and put him in jail, because he's a criminal."