A woman is charged with hate crimes after two Jewish men were cut in Midtown Manhattan

Two men were cut on Midtown streets on October 21, five minutes and two blocks apart, and prosecutors say the same woman picked both of them because they were Jewish.

The first man was walking on West 47th Street near Fifth Avenue in traditional Hasidic clothing, according to the criminal complaint. A detective wrote that Anna Mochalova followed him, kept following when he crossed the street, and cornered him against a car while speaking to him in a foreign language the man did not understand. The man told investigators he then felt a sharp, stinging sensation in his lower back and found a laceration that was bleeding.

About five minutes later, at West 45th Street and Sixth Avenue, a man wearing a yarmulke was waiting to cross the street. He told police he was pushed from behind and then felt a painful stinging sensation in his forearm. He said his attacker spoke to him in Russian and said words that amounted to, "Run away from here. I have a gun, I am going to shoot you," and then motioned toward the inside of her jacket as if she had a firearm. The same man told investigators he watched her approach another man and ask whether he was Jewish. When that man said he was Muslim, she walked away.

Mochalova, who is 32, faces two counts of assault in the second degree 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. She was arraigned on Sunday, bail was set at $50,000, and she returns to court on Thursday. A Legal Aid Society attorney, Lila Carpenter, is representing her.

The charges come in a year when New York is recording more hate crimes. Police statistics released this month put confirmed hate crimes up almost 13 percent year to date, at 463 incidents against 410 at the same point last year, as of October 26, and antisemitic crimes account for 52.9 percent of them. The third quarter ran the other way for anti Jewish crimes on its own, with 59 confirmed incidents against 68 in the third quarter of 2025. In August a man was arrested after authorities said he entered a Manhattan synagogue, disrupted Shabbat services, shouted antisemitic remarks and attacked a woman. In July, an Asian man and a Jewish man wearing a kippah were stabbed in separate incidents after leaving an Upper West Side synagogue. Prosecutors in that case say witnesses heard the attacker shout "Allahu Akbar" before the stabbings. He has pleaded not guilty.