Three Black teenage girls face hate crime charges due to an “anti-white” assault on a woman riding a bus. Presently, only two girls have been arrested on Tuesday, according to a press release issued by the New York Police Department, the New York Post reports.
The suspects, 15 and 16, are accused of assault and aggravated harassment of 57-year-old Jill LeCroix on July 9, which left the woman needing three staples in her head, the police reports, according to the New York Post.
The incident happened on an MTA bus in Queens when the girls engaged in a “verbal dispute,” an NYPD spokesperson said. One of the girls shouted, “I hate white people. I hate the way they talk, the way their skin cracks,” according to
CNN affiliate WCBS-TV.The girls hurled an unidentified object at the woman’s head, resulting in a laceration and bleeding. A third suspect is yet to be apprehended, CNN reports.
LeCroix told The Post earlier this month that after the assault, the three suspects blamed her for supporting former President Donald Trump.
“Never in my life have I been attacked like that,” said LeCroix.
The arrests of the girls took place three weeks after the attack on a southbound Q52 MTA bus near Jamaica Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard, the New York Post reports.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office is still determining the charges the teenagers will face.
Hate crimes in New York City have increased by 76% since April when compared to the data taken from the same period last year, according to data from the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force.
Currently, 35 hate crimes against Black people have been recorded in the city, 51 were committed against Asians, Jewish people faced 149 instances of hate crimes, and only one was registered against a white person, according to the NYPD Hate Crimes Dashboard.