Woman charged with hate crimes in attack on two Jewish men in NYC

A woman accused of assaulting two men in allegedly antisemitic attacks in New York City was charged with hate crimes connected to those incidents, according to police and court records.

The accused assailant, identified as Anna Mochalova, 32, faces two separate charges of assault in the second degree as a hate crime along with one count of menacing in the second degree as a hate crime, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree and two counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree, according to a criminal complaint.

Overall confirmed hate crimes in New York City increased almost 13% year to date as compared to last year, with 463 incidents this year compared to 410 last year, according to statistics released by the New York Police Department this month. Antisemitic crimes account for 52.9% of those incidents, and they are up slightly when compared to last year, the data show.

The two men say they were injured on October 21, when the first victim was walking on West 47th Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in traditional Hasidic Jewish clothing, according to the criminal complaint.

Mochalova allegedly followed the victim, even as he crossed the street, before cornering him against a car, a detective wrote in the complaint. He said she was speaking to him “in a foreign language,” but it’s not clear what the language was, or whether the victim understood her. The victim told the investigator he then felt a sharp, stinging sensation in his lower back and said he suffered a laceration along with bleeding, according to the complaint.

About five minutes later, the investigator says a man wearing a yarmulke, the skullcap traditionally worn by many Jewish men, was waiting to cross the street at West 45th Street and Sixth Avenue, court records show. The victim, who told police he speaks Russian, said he felt the alleged assailant push him from behind before he felt a painful stinging sensation in his forearm, according to the complaint.

It was there, the victim told the investigator, he heard his alleged attacker say to him in Russian something that substantively resembled the words, “Run away from here. I have a gun, I am going to shoot you,” court records show. She then motioned toward the inside of her jacket in what the victim interpreted to be an attempt to reference a firearm, the complaint said.

The victim said he saw her approach another man and ask him if he was Jewish, according to the complaint. When he said he was Muslim, the woman walked away, the detective wrote in the complaint. It was unclear from the complaint whether she allegedly approached the Muslim man before or after she approached the second Jewish man.

Mochalova was arraigned Sunday and bail was set at $50,000. She is due back in court Thursday.

Legal Aid Society attorney Lila Carpenter is representing Mochalova in court. CNN has reached out to her office for comment.

Though confirmed hate crimes overall increased in the third quarter, with 125 in 2026 compared to 111 in 2025, anti-Jewish hate crimes declined during the same period when compared to 2025, with 59 confirmed antisemitic hate crimes in 2026 compared to 68 in 2025, NYPD data shows.

In August, a 46-year-old man was arrested after authorities said he entered a Manhattan synagogue and disrupted Shabbat services before yelling antisemitic remarks, attacking a woman and hurling a racial slur at one of the security guards. Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York charged the man with federal hate crimes, to which he has pleaded not guilty.