Man charged with hate crimes in the stabbing of two teens in Grand Central
A Bronx man is charged with attempted murder and assault as hate crimes after he used an anti-white slur before stabbing two teenage sisters at a Grand Central Terminal restaurant on Christmas Day, according to officials and court records.
The girls, ages 16 and 14, were visiting New York from Paraguay and were at the terminal dining room restaurant with their parents around 11:30 a.m. when the attack occurred, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said.
Authorities identified the attacker as Steven Hutcherson, 36. In a criminal complaint, prosecutors identified the suspect as Esteban Esono-Asue, another name he uses.
After Mr. Esono-Asue entered the dining room of the Tartinery restaurant, an employee asked him to leave, the complaint said.
Mr. Esono-Asue, the complaint said, responded by saying, “I’m leaving. I don’t want the white man to get you.”
Mr. Esono-Asue, who is black, then asked a second employee to sit him at a table so he could place an order, according to a police report about the attack, the complaint said.
When the employee began to seat him, Mr. Esono-Asue refused, according to the complaint.
“I don’t want to sit with the black people,” he said, according to the complaint. “I want to sit with the crackers.”
Shortly after Mr. Esono-Asue sat down and received water, the complaint states, the second Tartinery employee saw him get up, approach a table where a family that appeared to be white was sitting, pull a knife from his pocket and kill one of the stabbing men. the girls in the back.
As the family tried to escape, he stabbed the second girl in the leg, the complaint said. Neither injury was life-threatening and the girls were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where the older sister was treated for a collapsed lung, officials and the complaint said.
Tartinery management did not respond to email and phone messages.
Mr. Esono-Asue was arraigned late Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court, where a judge ordered him detained, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.
He is awaiting sentencing in the Bronx in a case stemming from an episode in November. Originally charged with several low-level crimes, he pleaded guilty this month to an assault charge.
A lawyer for the Legal Aid Society who represented Mr. Esono-Asue in the Bronx case declined to comment. A spokesperson for the society did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Manhattan case.