NEW YORK — Detectives have identified the three teens who allegedly beat a 15-year-old autistic boy in an upper Manhattan subway station as others yelled the N-word at him in an attack that police are investigating as a possible hate crime.
The three teens hadn’t been arrested by Tuesday, as community activist groups decried the sheer viciousness and flippant racism seen in the video.
The boy, sporting glasses and a blue hooded sweatshirt, was pulled off a northbound A train at the 181st Street station near Fort Washington Avenue in Washington Heights around 5:30 p.m. Friday, cops said.
Video taken of the attack shows one teen handing the victim off to a teenage girl who grabs him by his sweatshirt and forces him to walk down the crowded platform.
“Walk!” the girl screams as her frightened victim tries to get back on the train. Commuters stare as she force-marches the boy down the platform.
After being shoved down the platform, the teen tries to break free, but the girl grabs his sweatshirt tighter.
“You runnin’!” she screams. “Why you runnin’!”
As a crowd gathers, several onlookers start screaming “N----- alert!” as the victim, who is Black, tries to break free one more time and jumps back on the train.
“Get off!” the teenage girl screams before slapping him in the face.
“Why do you want me to get off?” the teen asks meekly, taking a punch from another teen as he is pulled back to the platform.
When the teen tries to break free again, the teenage girl and two others assail him with haymakers and punches before the video ends.
After the assault, the victim gets on the A train to the Dyckman St. station, where police were told what happened.
The teen suffered bruises to his face and body and his glasses were broken, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
The teen’s mother told WABC News that her child is autistic. She finds the video of her boy being beaten hard to watch.
“Nobody wants to see their kid being assaulted,” said the mom, who didn’t wish to be identified.
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the attack since racial slurs were thrown around during the attack. All of the assailants appear to be Hispanic, police sources said.
Outraged by the video, Manhattan community activist Rosemary Severino held an anti-bullying rally outside the 181st St. station Tuesday.
“I think it’s unacceptable to even feel that it’s OK to use that slur,” Severino said at the rally. “The way that they were chanting, that’s what really broke my heart.”
Severino said she wants to find the family of the brutalized boy to get his side of the story.
“Is he OK?” Severino asked. “Did they randomly pick on him, or was it a suspected relation from a previous similar incident in November 2022 where a young Mexican was attacked?”
About a dozen people attended the rally, where some described the victim as a “transit kid” fascinated with trains.
“We just enjoy the subway,” said Eduardo Medellin, 15. “We find happiness, our safe place in the subways. That’s how we make friends. We’re a community that enjoys transit.”
“Something needs to happen so that they understand that you should not do this,” Severino said of the teens involved. “It’s not OK.”
Richard Davey, president of the New York City Transit, condemned the violence.
“This video is heartbreaking and disturbing, and our hearts are with the young man seemingly being senselessly victimized,” he said. “No one should be subject to this sort of hateful harassment while they are riding with New York City Transit, and the MTA is fully cooperating with the NYPD in its investigation into the incident.”
Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which speaks out against all forms of racial hatred, was also outraged by the disturbing imagery.
“The violence perpetrated against this young Black youth was horrific,” Nasher said. “We pray that the victim recovers and heals from this traumatic experience. Bigoted anti-Black violence will not be tolerated in our society. We must work together to eliminate the rise of hate against minority communities.”
