Two suspects have been arrested on hate crime charges in connection with a racially and politically charged beating on a New York City bus, and a third is still being sought.
The NYPD arrested and charged two teenaged girls, who are black, in the “anti-white assault” on July 9 attack, according to the New York Post.
The two face charges of assault while carrying out a hate crime and aggravated harassment while carrying out a hate crime, according to Fox News.
Because the suspects are minors, their names have not been publicly released, according to Fox.
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force thanked a tipster for providing information leading to the arrests in a Tuesday Twitter post.
The two girls on the left are in custody; the girl on the far right remains at large, according to Fox.
**ARREST- Assault**
Thanks to a tip, Detectives followed up and arrested 2 juveniles regarding this anti-white assault that occurred on the Q53 bus on July 9th. There is 1 outstanding perpetrator.https://t.co/2N0BSbf5iG pic.twitter.com/a44snB0aVN— NYPD Hate Crimes (@NYPDHateCrimes) July 26, 2022
The victim, Jill LeCroix, a 57-year-old grandmother of five, described the mob-style beatdown in an interview with the New York Post earlier this month.
Is this a hate crime?
In the attack, the Queens woman said, she was targeted for being white.
“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, a bartender, told the Post.
She said the girls began to attack her after questioning if she was a Donald Trump supporter.
“Before they hit me, the girl with the green hair said, ‘You probably like Trump! Don’t you?’” said the grandmother of five.
“I said, ‘I love him.’ I didn’t see which one hit me first.”
LeCroix said one of the girls, again the one with the green hair, pointed to a Queens cemetery during the bus ride, telling LeCroix that she would bury her there.
LeCroix later received three staples on her head to treat her injuries. She said her attackers struck her with an unknown object.
“I didn’t even know” how bad the wound was, she told the Post.
“They sat me down on the bus, and one of the passengers said, ‘Uh-oh, you’re bleeding pretty bad.’”
While she might not have known what weapon the girls used to strike her, LeCroix had some solid clues to their motivation.
“Never in my life have I been attacked like that,” LeCroix told the Post.
“They said they hate white people.”
