NYC subway hammer attack investigated as hate crime

Police are investigating an attack with a hammer inside a New York City subway station on Tuesday night as a possible hate crime.

The victim, described as a 29-year-old Asian person, bumped into the suspect on a platform in a subway station in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, ABC 7 in New York reported. After a verbal exchange, the suspect struck the victim with a hammer.

The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, according to the news outlet.

The Hill has reached out to the police department for further comment.

Attacks in New York City subway stations this year have prompted outrage in the city. Earlier this year, a man was injured after he was pushed off a subway station platform and onto the tracks just days after a woman was killed in a separate but similar incident.

The incidents prompted Mayor Eric Adams (D) to announce a plan to ban homeless people from sheltering and sleeping in the city’s subway system last month.

Adams also said he would devote more resources to shelter, house and provide mental health treatment to the city’s substantial homeless population, which included nearly 50,000 people sleeping each night in New York City’s municipal shelter system as of December, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

Adams said the “vast majority” of homeless people were not dangerous, but he didn’t want “fear to become reality.”

“We are not going to live in fear and frustration,” he said. “We have to dam every river if we are going to address this issue.”