This week, a man was arrested for punching a seven-months pregnant woman who was walking in Brooklyn. Suspect Willie Stephens, 33, allegedly attacked 34-year-old Jannatul Ferdous at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday as Ferdous walked with a friend down Monroe Street near Ralph Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. "She was lying on the ground and this guy was standing there laughing after he hit her," the friend, Nasrin Akter, told PIX. "I was just so scared for the baby."
"He didn’t say anything," Ferdous, through a translator, told PIX about the attack. "A man was walking toward us and then he just hit me." Stephens allegedly hit her in the head, knocking her unconscious. "I was scared and worried about the baby," Ferdous, who moved to Brooklyn three years ago from Bangladesh with her 40-year-old husband, told the News.
Thankfully, the baby was not hurt during the incident: "I’m happy he’s in jail because he can’t hurt anyone else," Ferdous said. "The baby is perfectly fine and we’re going to press charges. He needs to serve his time. We want to stop him from hurting someone else."
Stephens, who lives at a shelter in East New York, has been charged with attempted assault as a hate crime. Initial reports indicated this might be a knockout game assault, but he's charged with a hate crime because prosecutors believe he targeted her because she was wearing a burka. Stephens' lawyer refuted that: "I have complete sympathy for this victim, but we're disputing some of the facts," attorney Mike Pate told the News. "There is no evidence whatsoever that this is a hate crime."
