Police arrested a man who allegedlythrew a molotov cocktail in Midtown West last week.
Police say that shortly after 1:30 p.m. on October 9th, Thomas Miles, 53, approached a group of three men—the Muslim owner of a food-cart storage space and two yeshiva students—who were standing at 356 West 37 Street and "threw a glass bottle containing a flammable liquid and a burning rag in their direction." The bottle shattered on the ground and started a fire in front of the location, which was quickly extinguished. Miles allegedly fled on foot.
No one was injured. Police believe the food-cart storage owner, Saleh Hegazy, was the target, because Hegazy had shooed Miles away from a bench outside the establishment. "It escalated and became physical,” Deputy Inspector Mark Magrone, head of the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force, tells the Daily News. “Hegazy alleges that he’s slapped. Hegazy retaliates by throwing a coffee cup with [coffee] on the perpetrator."
Miles, whom the News describes as "a burly 5-feet-9, 215 pound man," allegedly stormed off, returning 20 minutes later to throw the molotov cocktail at Hegazy.
The NYPD is not classifying the attack as a hate crime. But because the yeshiva students initially believed they were the targets, the incident quickly made headlines here and in Israel, and the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement suggesting yeshiva students were actually the target: "We are quite concerned by reports of an unprovoked attack directed against two rabbinical students who were visiting New York City from Israel. The possibility that these young men may have been singled out for an anti-Semitic attack because of their visibility as religious Jews is deeply troubling."
Miles, a Queens resident, was arrested after police released surveillance video of the suspect. He's charged with three counts of attempted murder, nine counts of attempted felony assault, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and three counts of reckless endangerment.
