The maniac who allegedly went on a stabbing rampage while screaming “Allahu Akbar” on the Upper West Side was indicted for the unhinged, hate-fueled attack, prosecutors announced Thursday.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office secured an indictment against Raul Morales, the 51-year-old Upper West Side resident who currently stands charged with hate crime raps for each of the two July 23 attacks.
Morales, who wasn’t in Manhattan Criminal Court for the brief hearing, allegedly first approached a 57-year-old Asian man from behind while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and plunged a knife into his back near West 84th Street and Central Park West, prosecutors have said.
He then walked passed a synagogue steps from the first stabbing — yelling “Justice for Islam” and “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is greater!’’ in Arabic — before encountering Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, a 50-year-old Jewish man wearing a kippah, four blocks later near the Jewish Center.
Morales allegedly stabbed Grunhaus in the chest with a screwdriver, with witnesses again reporting that he said “Allahu Akbar,” according to a criminal complaint.
He was arrested less than an hour after the attack, at his NYCHA apartment just blocks away on Amsterdam Avenue near West 88th Street, where he had barricaded himself, cops have said.
Around 20 supporters of Grunhaus’ showed up for the court hearing Thursday, including close friend Nava Silton, who said he was healing “little by little.”
“He’s working hard on healing and he has good people supporting him in that endeavor,” Silton said outside the courthouse.
Morales remains locked up on Rikers Island and will be arraigned on the indictment on Sept. 22 before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Althea Drysdale. The charges in the indictment will be revealed during that hearing.
Cops initially hit Morales — a former drug parolee and an apparent onetime Brooklyn security guard — with hate crime raps only for the attack on Grunhaus, but the charges were updated at his criminal court arraignment July 24. He’s now charged with two counts of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, in addition to assault and attempted assault with hate crime enhancements.
If convicted, Morales faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on attempted murder as a hate crime, a class B violent felony, where sentences can run consecutively instead of at the same time.
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