A teenager threatened a nine-year-old boy with a knife and screamed, “I will kill you, Jew,” at a busy New York playground, police have said.
The disturbing scenes unraveled at KIPP AMP Middle School and MS 354 in Crown Heights on Monday evening.
The victim’s mother reported her son was targeted within minutes of their arrival and that her daughter was also attacked.
Chaya Sundroy said: “My kids were shaking, they were crying. They asked why.
“We didn’t do nothing to him, why they say that, why they want to killed us. They were really, really scared about it.”
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Sundroy moved to New York from Israel 10 years ago and her family is the latest victim in a series of violent confrontations recorded in the Big Apple since Israel declared war on Hamas following the slaying of 1,400 Israelis.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been conducting relentless air raids on Gaza since, resulting in the death of thousands of civilians and fueling tensions across the Arab and Jewish communities across the world.
Police said the hateful teen was also heard shouting “hail Hitler”, a scream Sundroy said was aimed at her daughter.
Additional sources told The New York Post that several people allegedly joined in the attack shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
Sundroy said she first heard someone shouting abusive comments at her son before her family was confronted by another group yelling antisemitic slurs at them.
A boy in the group then flashed a knife, the woman and police have said.
She added: “When the guy took out the knife I saw it. It was very close to me. I saw it and heard it.”
The group ran off as soon as police were called to the scene and no one was injured.
NYPD have said they are investigating the incident as a “possible biased incident” and are seeking for one person.
Sundroy said she is not certain whether the person who shouted at her son was the same person who yelled at them.
She said the group that confronted them appeared to be young, possibly teenagers.
The city has experienced a spike in hate crimes between the Jewish and Arab communities since the start of the war. NYPD said 60 percent of the reported crime targeted the Jewish community.
