⚠️ UPDATE in anti-Jewish Hate Crime involving 8YO child. Thanks to help from the public, HCTF Detectives, assisted by Bklyn South Warrants,
— NYPD Hate Crimes (@NYPDHateCrimes) January 21, 2022
arrested:
Darling, Christina 21
Brooklyn
Charges:
Aggravated Harassment/Hate Crime
Act in Manner Injurious to Child<17 x3
Menacing/HC https://t.co/ZGC4AVvAwG pic.twitter.com/iKeAKuHi65
The woman who allegedly told three Jewish kids “Hitler should have killed you all” before spitting on an 8-year-old boy in Brooklyn has been arrested, cops said Friday.
Suspect Christina Darling, a 21-year-old student at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, was busted Friday morning and charged with aggravated harassment and menacing, both as hate crimes, and acting in a manner injurious to a child, NYPD Hate Crimes said.
“I’m glad she was found & charged with a crime but what in G-d’s name is going on in this country that an adult would target innocent kids with such hatred?” former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn raged on Twitter.
Darling is accused of storming up to the boy, who was with two other kids, around 12:30 p.m. Jan. 14 on Avenue P near Coleman Street in Marine Park, about five blocks from her home, police said.
She snarled at the kids, “Hitler should have killed you all. I’ll kill you and know where you live,” cops said.
Footage released by the NYPD on Tuesday shows Christina standing directly in front of the kids as she spat on the boy, cops said. Christina, who wore an orange hoodie with black leggings and black Ugg-style boots, fled after she accosted the kids, police said. Details of how cops tracked her down weren’t immediately known.
The suspect’s distraught mother told The Post on Friday that her daughter “has mental problems.”
“She needs to get help, it’s not like she hates Jews,” mom Michelle Darling insisted.
But the suspect’s former flame from high school, Shayne Yorrick, told The Post that his ex always had issues with Hasidic Jews.
“I know she had a thing against Hasidic Jews, but I never knew it was this severe,” Yorrick told The Post of Christina Darling on Friday. “She would bad-mouth and talk down on them. She said they were annoying, that they don’t deserve to be around and should all go back to Israel – things along those lines.”
Yorrick, 23, said he last spoke to Darling last summer and has since thrown out or deleted all of the photos he had of them together. He’s “appalled” by the allegations facing the woman he once thought he might marry.
“I was shocked that she would’ve done such a thing,” Yorrick said. “But honestly, toward the religious [Jews], she had more of a mean streak towards them.”
The couple’s relationship ended “bitterly” in March after Darling cheated on him, he said.
“I believe justice was served,” the scorned ex said of her arrest.
A former classmate at James Madison High School in Sheepshead Bay, where Darling graduated in 2018, told The Post that the suspect was known to be a “little off” — once even pretending her mother was dead in an attempt to get attention from others.
The ex-classmate, now a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said Darling also had been accused of being bigoted by some while in high school.
Still, the allegations against Darling came as a surprise to the former classmate, since their high school was diverse and the suspect had Jewish friends.
But “she does have that temper,” the classmate claimed. “She gets annoyed very easily. She is also capable of saying hurtful things when she’s upset … which is one of the reasons why we stopped being friends.”
Another woman who also asked not be identified said she met Darling while at summer camp and last spoke to her five years ago.
“I’m shocked” at the allegations, the former friend said. “Our friends at the time were mostly Jewish.”
Darling has been enrolled at St. Francis since August 2019, according to her Facebook profile.
The profile, most recently updated in October, features many selfies of the 21-year-old.
“Take life by the hand and live it,” the profile reads. “Let it guide you to your destination. Yes, the road to get there will be rough, but in the end you’ll get to where you need to be. No matter how big of a detour and how rough the road may be.”
A petition on Change.org called for Darling’s expulsion from St. Francis.
“I urge President Miguel Martinez-Saenz to stand by his promises and denounce this horrifying act of racism, bigotry, and harassment against the Jewish people,” the petition reads. “If appropriate disciplinary action isn’t taken, an egregious precedent will be set.”
In a letter posted to Twitter, Martinez-Saenz said the school “recently learned of an anti-Semitic incident allegedly involving an individual from our community.
“St. Francis College is a caring community of students and employees from a broad range of backgrounds with differing beliefs,” the statement read. “Our learning environment values radical hospitality and openness to all.”
Any conduct targeting people due to their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political beliefs “will not be tolerated,” Martinez-Saenz said.
A message seeking additional comment from school officials on Darling’s enrollment status was not immediately returned Friday.
Martinez-Saenz previously condemned anti-Semitism in a statement to students in May amid an uptick in attacks against New York’s Jewish community.
“I want to make plain that our community is calling for an end to harassment and violence,” Martinez-Saenz said. “As a reminder, all members of the St. Francis College community take seriously the command to ‘love our neighbor,’ and it is not something that we only espouse, it is something we are prepared to enact.”
Meanwhile, Darling’s mother complained, “There’s supposed to be a rally outside my house now.”
Michelle Darling said the commotion will be too much for her elderly father, who she is caring for at home.
“I can’t have that,” she said. “My father will end up having a heart attack.”
3 comments:
I immediately suspected mental health issues. But now the criminal justive system should deal with it. Kids on the street should be safe.
I know what will happen. Her lawyer will say she wasn't taking her medicine and that's why she is acting this way.
I feel one of the reasons things like this happen to us in der Goldina Medina is to remind us Yidden that you will never be comfortable here and you must remember that only Eretz Yisroel is our home. Although Eretz Yisroel has problems too.
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