By EFE
Dec 27, 2023, 17:34 PM EST
The Manhattan, New York, District Attorney’s Office has charged a man with attempted murder and assault after allegedly stabbing two sisters, aged 14 and 16in a restaurant at New York’s Grand Central station on Christmas morning.
Authorities accuse the defendant, a 36-year-old man from the Bronx named Esteban Esono-Asue, of trying to murder and assault the minors –two teenagers from Paraguay who were on a family trip to New York– after uttering an insult against whites, for which both crimes have been considered hate crimes.
On December 25, Esono-Asue (also known by the name Steven Hutcherson) entered the Tartinery restaurant, went to the table where the victims were eating with their family, He took a knife out of his pocket and stabbed one of the teenagers in the back.. While the family tried to flee, the accused stabbed the second minor in the leg, reports The New York Times.
The attack occurred around 11:30 a.m. local time, after an employee asked the defendant to leave the restaurant, to which he responded: “I’ll leave. “I don’t want the white man to catch you.”
After this, he asked a second employee if he could sit at one of the tables, and while the worker seated him, Esono-Asue told him that he did not want to sit with African Americans, but with the ‘crackers’, a racist insult that is often used against white people, generally poor and poorly educated, from the southern United States.
According to this worker, shortly after the man got up and carried out the attack.
The victims were taken to the Bellevue public hospital, in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan.where the oldest was treated for a collapsed lung, as detailed in the complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office collected by The New York Times.
The suspect was arraigned late Tuesday in a Manhattan court, where a judge ordered his arrest, and has previously been convicted of misdemeanors; In addition, he is awaiting sentencing in a Bronx court for a crime allegedly committed in November.
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