A Bronx man has been arrested after stabbing two teenage girls from Paraguay in Grand Central Station on Christmas morning after declaring he wanted “all white people dead.”
Steven Hutcherson, who also goes by the name Esteban Esono-Asue, allegedly entered a dining area in the cavernous Manhattan train depot where the tourists were eating. Hutcherson, who is black, insisted on being seated beside the teenagers accompanied by their parents. Local law enforcement reported that Hutcherson reportedly screamed, “I want all the white people dead.”
Notably, the New York Times did not report this quote in their coverage of the hate crime, despite its being cited in other coverage of the attack.
“I don’t want to sit with the black people,” Hutcherson insisted to the host at the restaurant. “I want to sit next to the crackers.” After being seated beside the Paraguayan family, according to the police report, Hutcherson approached their table with a knife and stabbed one of the daughters in the back before attacking the second girl in the leg. Both were later taken to Bellevue Hospital, with neither reporting to be in life-threatening condition.
“Any time you have incidents in these high profile locations, it sends the feeling of people don’t feel safe, that’s why we have to make sure we zero in, make the arrests as soon as possible, and make sure we get those repeat offenders off the streets,” Mayor Eric Adams said after the incident.
Hutcherson has been arrested nearly 20 times, two of which came in the last six months. In November, he threatened Yussif Abdullahi with a weapon and received a 15-day sentence, a ruling which left Abdullahi deeply disappointed. “They shouldn’t have let him out [of jail]. I don’t believe it,” Abdullahi told the New York Post on Tuesday.
Hutcherson threatened to shoot Abdullahi, claiming he didn’t “care what kind of green card the government gave you.” “Open your mouth and say something. I will shoot you right now,” Hutcherson reportedly said during the altercation.
The Paraguayan consul general in America told ABC that Hutcherson has “psychiatric problems.”