16-Year-Old Is Charged With Hate Crimes in Gang Assault on Black Teen

By Christopher Maag, New York Times

A 16-year-old has been charged with several hate crimes in a gang attack on a Black teenager at a subway station this week, the police said.

The attack happened at 8 a.m. Monday at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn, according to the police. The victim, 16, who has not been identified, was on his way to school when he was approached by a group of people, a police spokeswoman said. The group punched and kicked the boy, taunted him with racial slurs and removed one of his shoes, the spokeswoman said.

On Wednesday the police arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the attack. He faces five criminal charges, including hate crime robbery and hate crime gang assault in the second degree. The police did not release the name or ethnicity of the boy who was charged. The case is being investigated by the Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force.

Hate crimes on the subway, in line with broader trends, are down. The number of hate crimes in the system dropped 32 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to police statistics. Data shows that crime on the subway has declined overall, though perceptions of criminality remain persistent: Barely a majority of riders, 56 percent, said they felt safe on the subway, according to a survey released in January.

That may be related to the increasingly random nature of subway crime and a series of high-profile violent episodes. The examples last year included a train conductor who was slashed late at night on an A train in Brooklyn in February. In December, at the same station in Coney Island where the teenager was attacked this week, Debrina Kawam, 57, died after being set on fire in a random early-morning attack on a parked train.

Nine days later, a man pushed Joseph Lynskey onto the tracks in front of a train at the 18th Street subway station in Manhattan. He narrowly survived. People were pushed onto the tracks at least 25 times last year. (While riders might believe that young people are responsible for most violent crime, recent data finds that the average person charged with violence on the subway is 32 years old, compared with 24 nearly two decades ago.)

Keep reading to learn MTA’s response to the rise in attacks.

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