Suspects in Assault May Be Charged With Hate Crimes

A group of young suspects may be charged with hate crimes after being arrested on Friday for assaulting four Jewish victims inside a subway train running between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The police department's hate crime task force is now investigating the incident, in which four victims, two males and two females, were beaten up and taunted with anti-Semitic remarks by the group of ten suspects on a Q train leaving from the Canal Street station in Manhattan, police said.

The attack was initiated after the group of male and female suspects, one of whom has previously pleaded guilty to a hate crime, saw the victims wishing each other a happy Chanukah, according to a release from the Anti-Defamation League.

"We were shocked and saddened to hear of the vicious, unprovoked and prolonged anti-Semitic attack perpetrated against four Jewish students celebrating Hanukkah," the league's New York regional director, Joel Levy, said in a statement.

After making anti-Semitic remarks, the gang of suspects proceeded to attack them with a flurry of punches and kicks, according to the complaint filed in Brooklyn Criminal Court. One subway rider attempted to defend the victims during the attack, Mr. Levy said. Police arrested the suspects, eight males and two females who are between 19 and 20 years old, after the train stopped at the DeKalb Avenue subway station at about 11:15 p.m., police said.

Two of the victims, Walter Adler and Angelica Krischanovich, were taken to local hospitals with facial cuts and swelling. The two other victims, who were not hospitalized, also suffered swelling from blows to the face, according to the complaint.

The ten suspects, all of whom face misdemeanor assault charges, were released by a judge on their own recognizance, a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, Jonah Bruno, said. With the police department's hate crime task force and the district attorney's bureau of civil rights investigating the case, the charges could be increased to felony hate crimes.

One of the suspects, Joseph Jirovec, 19, has already pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in the third degree as a hate crime for his involvement in the gang beating and robbery of a black teenager in the Gerritsen Beach section of Brooklyn in June 2006, according to court records.

In the incident, a mob of white suspects voiced racial slurs at four black teenagers before beating one of them and stealing his bicycle, according to court records.