A third African American teenager was charged with hate crimes as well as other crimes in connection to an assault that occurred on a bus in Queens, New York.
Jahnaiya Williams, 19, was arrested on Monday on charges of second- and third-degree assault as a hate crime, second- and third-degree assault, third-degree menacing as a hate crime, second-degree aggravated harassment, and menacing, 1010 WINS reported. The other two suspects, who are 15 and 16 years old, were arrested last month but not publicly named because of their age. They also face assault and aggravated harassment as hate crimes, the New York Post reported.
On July 9, police said that three teenagers approached 57-year-old Jill LeCroix – a grandmother of five – on a Queens bus, and allegedly made anti-white statements as they struck her in the head. LeCroix was left bloody and required three staples to close the wound.
In the weeks after the attack LeCroix told the Post that one of the teens who attacked her accused her of being a fan of former President Donald Trump.
“Before they hit me, the girl with the green hair said, ‘You probably like Trump! Don’t you?’ LeCroix told the outlet. “I said, ‘I love him.’ I didn’t see which one hit me first.”
“The one with the green hair, she was saying she hates white people, the way they talk, hates white skin, the way their skin cracks. Saying she was gangsta,” LeCroix added. “I was the only white person on the bus. By the time we started passing St. John’s Cemetery on Woodhaven, she started in on me, saying, ‘That’s where I’m going to bury you!’”
“She had a bag from Bath and Body Works, and she took out a scrub and said she was going to beat me with it. It was tangerine,” LeCroix told the Post. “She said, ‘You’re going to get what you deserve! All white people are going to get what they deserve.’ It was crazy.”
The two other teens involved in the attack were arrested on July 26 after a tip came into crime watchers, The Daily Wire reported at the time.
The attack follows an increase in violent crime in New York City, with rape increasing 15% over the past year, robberies increasing 40%, and felony assaults increasing 20%, according to the Post. The state of New York has also seen a 76% increase in hate crimes during the same time period, CNN reported.
Source: Dailywire
