A 32-year-old Brooklyn woman accused of attacking two Jewish men within minutes of each other in Midtown Manhattan on Oct. 21 was arraigned on Sunday, Oct. 25, on hate-crime charges, and a judge set bail at half what prosecutors had requested.
Anna Mochalova, who lives in Brighton Beach, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges that include two counts of assault with intent to injure with a weapon as a hate crime, one count of menacing in the second degree as a hate crime, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree and two counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree based on race or religion, Fox 5 New York reported, citing state court records.
She has not been convicted of any crime. Charges in a criminal complaint are accusations, and she is presumed innocent. She did not enter a plea at the arraignment, according to Fox 5, and was due back in state court on Thursday, Oct. 29.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Ms. Mochalova with two counts of committing a hate crime under 18 U.S.C. § 249, each carrying a maximum of 10 years in prison, Gothamist reported. The federal charges are also accusations, and she is presumed innocent of them.
The allegations
According to prosecutors and the criminal complaint as described in news reports, the first attack happened at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, outside 15 West 47th Street, in the heart of the Diamond District.
Surveillance video showed a woman dressed in black, wearing a brown faux-fur jacket and a backpack, following a 26-year-old man in traditional Hasidic clothing and speaking to him in a foreign language before cornering him against a vehicle, Fox 5 reported. Prosecutors allege that she plunged a sharp object, suspected to be a syringe, into his lower back. The man told investigators he felt a stabbing sensation and later realized he was bleeding, CBS New York reported, citing court records. He was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
About five minutes later, at Avenue of the Americas and West 45th Street, a second man, who was wearing a yarmulke, told the police he was pushed repeatedly from behind while waiting to cross the street, then felt a sharp, stinging pain in his right forearm and found a bleeding cut, according to the complaint as reported by Fox 5.
When he turned around, the complaint says, the woman threatened him in Russian. The outlets rendered the words slightly differently: Fox 5 quoted the complaint as “Run away from here, I have a gun, I am going to shoot you,” while CBS New York quoted court documents as “Go away from here. I have a gun. I’m going to kill you.” The complaint says she then reached into her jacket as if she had a gun.
She then approached a bystander and asked him in English whether he was Jewish, according to the police and the complaint. When he said he was Muslim, she apologized and walked away.
Neither victim has been publicly identified, and The City Politic is not naming them.
How she was identified
The NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force took up the case after the first attack, and the Manhattan Shomrim Safety Patrol, a Jewish volunteer neighborhood patrol, provided surveillance video, according to Fox 5. According to prosecutors, a transit police officer later identified Ms. Mochalova from still images based on previous interactions with her, Fox 5 reported. The police and prosecutors have not publicly described what those interactions were.
In court
At the arraignment, prosecutors asked for bail of $100,000 cash or a $300,000 bond. The judge set it at $50,000 cash or a $150,000 bond, according to state records cited by Fox 5. CBS New York reported that she was due back on Oct. 29 “after partially securing a $150,000 bond.”
Ms. Mochalova is represented by Lila Carpenter of the Legal Aid Society. Neither Ms. Carpenter nor Legal Aid commented publicly on the case in the reports we reviewed. The case docket number and the name of the arraigning judge were not included in the public reports.
Why the charges matter
In New York, a “hate crime” is not a separate offense but an enhancement: when prosecutors can show a defendant intentionally selected a victim because of a perceived characteristic such as religion, the specified underlying offense is treated as one class higher, with correspondingly heavier potential penalties. That makes motive, not just the alleged conduct, a central question in any trial.
The complaint, as reported, describes two men in visibly Jewish dress attacked within minutes and a question to a third man about whether he was Jewish. None of that has been tested in court. The defense will have the opportunity to challenge the identification, the video and the account of what was said, including words spoken in Russian and translated for the complaint.
A neighborhood on edge
The Diamond District, on West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, is home to many Jewish-owned businesses, and the attacks unsettled people who work there. “This is a block with a lot of Jewish people, and everybody is on edge. It’s hard not to be,” one person told CBS New York. A store owner who knows the first victim’s family told the station he was relieved the case was being investigated as a hate crime but worried about her release: “I’m afraid she’ll just be out in a few days, and who knows what she’ll do next.”
The bail decision is likely to feed the city’s long-running argument over New York’s bail laws, which limit when judges may set bail and require them to consider the least restrictive means of ensuring a defendant’s return. In this case, the charges were bail-eligible, and the judge set bail, at a lower amount than prosecutors sought.
Ms. Mochalova was due back in state court on Oct. 29. The federal case is proceeding separately in the Southern District.
Featured image: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on the Upper West Side, June 2023. Photo by CmdrDan via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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