(Oct. 25, 2026 / JNS)
A 32-year-old Brooklyn woman has been arrested following the stabbing of a Jewish man in Manhattan’s Diamond District, an NYPD spokesperson told JNS during a phone inquiry on Sunday.
Anna Mochalova was arrested at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, within the confines of the Midtown North Precinct, the spokesperson said. She was charged with eight counts of assault, eight counts of menacing, two counts of aggravated harassment and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
The spokesperson did not specify whether any charges included hate-crime enhancements. Police previously told JNS that the stabbing was being investigated as a potential hate crime.
The woman wanted in connection with the stabbing of a Chabad bochur in Midtown Manhattan earlier this week has been arrested. The suspect is accused of carrying out two separate assaults being investigated as hate crimes on the same day.https://t.co/sbaQlsBxPF
— CrownHeights.info (@CHInfoNews) October 25, 2026
Officers responded to a 911 call at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday near West 47th Street and Fifth Avenue. An assailant approached a 26-year-old man and stabbed him in the back with an “unknown sharp object,” police told JNS. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.
Surveillance footage viewed by JNS appeared to show the attacker approaching the visibly Jewish victim from behind, stabbing him and fleeing.
Manhattan Shomrim announced on Saturday evening that a suspect wanted in connection with two assaults in Midtown on Wednesday was in custody, CrownHeights.info reported. The Jewish volunteer safety patrol credited cooperation with the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, Shomrim groups in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and Queens, and tips from the public.
CrownHeights.info identified the victim as Yosef, a 26-year-old Chabad rabbinical student from Crown Heights, and reported that he returned to the Diamond District the following day to help Jewish merchants and workers put on tefillin.
The attack comes amid continued antisemitic hate crimes in New York City.
Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of 245 of the city’s 463 confirmed hate crimes in the first nine months of 2026, or 53%, according to NYPD figures released on Oct. 6 and previously reported by JNS. Anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 1.2% compared with the same period in 2025, even as major crime citywide fell 6.6%.
“Even with a lower crime rate, it is hard to feel safe and secure when Jews see police cars stationed in front of their synagogues and schools, and support for terrorist groups on signs in their streets,” Scott Richman, the Anti-Defamation League’s New York and New Jersey regional director, told JNS.
