NYPD Charges Raul Morales With Hate Crimes in Pair of Upper West Side Stabbings

Prosecutors in Manhattan charged a 51-year-old man with attempted murder and hate crimes Friday over two stabbings on the Upper West Side that left one man with a blade wound to the back and another with a screwdriver driven into his chest.

Raul Morales was booked on two counts each of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, with charges in both attacks elevated to hate crimes. Police said the first assault happened around 1:30 p.m. Thursday near Central Park West and West 84th Street, where a 57-year-old Asian man was stabbed in the back. Minutes later and two blocks north, near West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue — close to a synagogue — a 50-year-old Jewish man was attacked with a screwdriver. Both victims were hospitalized and are expected to recover.

Investigators said witnesses and the victims themselves reported hearing the attacker shout "Allahu Akbar" during both assaults, and that detectives concluded the men were deliberately targeted because of who they appeared to be. Officers cornered Morales after he barricaded himself inside a building at Amsterdam Avenue and West 88th Street, and he was taken into custody without further injuries. He is due back in court on July 30.

The arrest landed in the middle of an already raw political argument in New York. Jewish community leaders used the case to press Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his sustained public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that the rhetoric has consequences on the street. "Mayor Mamdani, stop fanning the flames of hatred and division," said Eric Goldstein, chief executive of the UJA-Federation of New York.

Mamdani, who was escorted from the 20th Precinct after being briefed on the investigation, drew a sharp line between the two. "My criticisms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are of specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," the mayor said, adding that his obligation as mayor runs to every New Yorker regardless of faith or background and that the city would prosecute the attacks as hate crimes to the full extent of the law.

The stabbings fit a pattern the NYPD has been tracking for more than a year. Reported hate crimes in the city have run heavily toward antisemitic incidents since the Gaza war began, with anti-Asian assaults — a category that surged during the pandemic and never returned to its pre-2020 baseline — the second-largest share. Both of Thursday's attacks occurred in daylight on crowded residential blocks a short walk from Central Park, in a neighborhood with one of the largest Jewish populations in the country.

Under New York law, the hate-crime designation raises the sentencing exposure by one felony class, meaning Morales faces substantially more prison time than the underlying attempted-murder counts alone would carry. The Manhattan district attorney's office said the investigation into whether the two attacks were planned, or whether the second grew out of the first, is continuing.