Steven Hutcherson stabbed two teenage girls at a cafe in Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, police said. (Screenshot: WPIX)
A man with a lengthy arrest history stabbed two teenage girls after he tried to sit in the area of a cafe in Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, according to cops in New York City.
Steven Hutcherson, 36, is charged with attempted murder in the second degree as a hate crime, assault in the first and second degree as a hate crime, attempted assault in the first degree as a hate crime, and endangering the welfare of a child, according to New York ABC affiliate WABC.
“I want all the white people dead,” Hutcherson yelled, police sources told The New York Post. “I want to sit next to the crackers.”
According to authorities, a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl were eating at Tartinery Cafe on the dining concourse of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on Monday just before 11:30 a.m.
Hutcherson, known to authorities as an emotionally disturbed man with a history that includes 17 prior arrests, allegedly argued with cafe staff after they told him he could not sit in the area.
Staffers told The Post that he wanted a table but was not going to order anything. After being refused, he pointed at the victims’ family and said they were not eating anything either. He then allegedly became enraged, grabbed a knife and attacked the girls, who were reportedly visiting the United States from Paraguay.
He stabbed the 16-year-old in the back, the blade of his knife nicking her lung, authorities said. He allegedly then stabbed the 14-year-old in the thigh. MTA police arrived from their nearby posts, and Hutcherson surrendered, putting down the knife, authorities said.
“They shouldn’t have let him out,” Yussif Abdullahi, 46, told The Post. “I don’t believe it.”
Hutcherson was sentenced on Dec. 12 to conditional discharge for a Nov. 7 incident in which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor third-degree assault.
Abdullahi described working outside a freight truck depot in the Bronx neighborhood of Hunts Point. He said he saw Hutcherson attacking a woman.
“Why are you working for white people? I’m going to kill this man!” Hutcherson, who is Black, told Abdullahi, who arrived in the U.S. from Ghana in 2008.
The defendant threatened to shoot him, according to the criminal complaint obtained by The Post.
“I don’t care what kind of green card the government gave you,” Hutcherson said in documents. “Open your mouth and say something. I will shoot you right now.”
Abdullahi said he first believed that the man might have been “high and going crazy.”
As he attempted to walk back into his workshop, Hutcherson blocked him and showed what seemed to be a gun tucked into his waistband.
“He pulled a gun on me and said, ‘I don’t care what kind of green card you have. I’m gonna shoot you right now!” Abdullahi told the outlet.
Authorities said Hutcherson later sucker-punched a man a block away. They found a knife on him but not a gun when they arrested him at a local gas station for the original charges of criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, harassment, and assault.
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