Source: Women are Human
US — New York, New York. A 48-year-old with a history of 56 arrests has been charged in relation to a hammer attack on a Manhattan subway platform, which police are calling a hate crime. At arraignment, the suspect was additionally slapped with charges for stealing ice cream and beating up a store employee.
Chris Jeffers, who is male and identifies as a woman, is facing charges of Assault, Aggravated Harassment and Menacing, each of which has been enhanced as a hate crime, in addition to a Weapon Possession charge after a March 8 incident left an Asian man with a deep cut to the head.
A 29-year-old and his friend headed home after a dinner in Chelsea. As the pair waited for a number two train at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue at 9:20 PM, “we saw the assailant come out from the turnstile,” he later told NBC New York.
“As he was coming out he bumped into another individual that was in front of us” and those two exchange heated words.
The suspect then walked in the victim’s direction. The victim moved to the side to avoid contact, he later told the press.
The suspect “turned around, trying to get in my face, get in my face aggressively,” stepping on the younger man’s foot in the process.
Cell phone video captured by the younger man’s friend purportedly shows the perpetrator yelling: “Don’t you see me walking here? Don’t you have eyes? Open your eyes!”
“Too quick for me to react,” the suspect took out a hammer and struck the 29-year-old in the head, the injured man later recounted.
The 29-year-old was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.
Mr Jeffers was apprehended less than 24 hours later. As police led him away in handcuffs, he claimed to have been the actual victim in the earlier incident.
“Did he push me first? Did he push the transgender? He pushed me first. Look at the video,” Mr Jeffers said to reporters.
A criminal complaint alleges that Mr Jeffers used racial slurs against an officer and threatened them: “By the time I get out of prison, first thing I’m going to do is get a gun and try to kill as many of you as possible.”
A judge ordered Mr Jeffers held on $300,000 bail.
At arraignment, prosecutors added charges for Robbery and Petit Larceny in connection with a February 11 incident at a Duane Reade on W 111th Street and Broadway in Morningside Heights. According to prosecutors, Mr Jeffers fled the pharmacy with stolen ice cream after throwing an employee against shelves and to the ground and delivering blows to the person’s head.
Mr Jeffers’s lengthy rap sheet, which dates back to 2007, includes a conviction for Robbery. After serving six years in prison for the crime, he was paroled in June, and was put on supervised release until September 2024.
