Two teenage girls visiting New York City from South America were stabbed in Grand Central Station on Monday in a possible racially motivated incident. The attacker, a 36-year-old homeless Black man with diagnosed mental illnesses and more than a dozen prior arrests, reportedly yelled that he wanted “all White people” to die during the assault.
The two victims, a 14- and 16-year-old from Paraguay, sustained non-fatal injuries just before noon on Christmas Day. According to reports, the girls were seated at the Tartinery Café in the Grand Central Dining Concourse with their families when 36-year-old Steven Hutcherson (also known as Esteban Esono-Asue) approached the restaurant.
Hutcherson requested a table, saying “I don’t want to sit with Black people, I want to sit with the crackers,” but he refused to order anything. When employees asked him to leave, he became increasingly irate and yelled out “I want all the White people dead!”
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He then pulled out a knife and lunged towards the nearby family, apparently deeming the girls to be sufficiently White-passing to warrant his attention. The younger girl sustained a stab wound to the thigh, while the older one was stabbed in the back, with the blade puncturing her lung.
Nearby transit police responded in seconds as the family fled, and Hutcherson was placed under arrest. Both girls were hospitalized, but their injuries were reportedly not life-threatening.
The assailant was charged with several felony counts, including assault, attempted murder, criminal possession of a weapon, and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority. On Wednesday, hate crime charges were added to the lineup as well given the racial overtones of the incident.
Hutcherson is being held without bail after pleading not guilty at his initial hearing on Tuesday. He is scheduled to return to court on Friday.
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However, this was far from Hutcherson’s first run-in with law enforcement.
On November 7, Hutcherson was arrested after another violent encounter in the Bronx. During that incident, 46-year-old Ghanaian immigrant Yussif Abdullahi allegedly observed Hutcherson harassing a woman on the street and attempted to intervene. Turning his attention on Abdullahi, Hutcherson yelled “Why are you working for white people? I’m going to kill this man!”
“I’m gonna shoot you. I don’t care what kind of green card the government gave you,” he continued, flashing what appeared to be a gun in the waistband of his pants. “Open your mouth and say something. I will shoot you right now.”
After Abdullahi retreated, Hutcherson fled the area and assaulted another man one block away before being arrested. After pleading guilty to third-degree assault, Bronx Judge Matthew V. Grieco sentenced him to a conditional discharge on December 12, allowing him back onto the street less than two weeks before the stabbing at Grand Central Station.
Hutcherson also served a 15-day sentence in jail in October for another offense this summer, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office confirmed. It is not clear how much of that sentence he actually served.
Charges from his 16 previous arrests also include incidents of menacing and intimidation, assault, vandalism, and resisting arrest. He has long been considered an “emotionally disturbed person” by local law enforcement.
Upon learning of his release earlier this month, Abdullahi was incredulous that a violent offender like Hutcherson was allowed back onto the street. “They shouldn’t have let him out. I don’t believe it,” he said.
“I’m so disappointed in the cops,” he continued. “When he was threatening me, he told me, ‘The cops don’t do s**t! They don’t do s**t!’ And what he said was true. The cops didn’t do anything.”
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