Four Young Students Arrested in Alleged ‘Knockout’ Attacks, Police Say
Sonja Sharp, DNA Info, December 19, 2013
Police have arrested four children in connection with a string of alleged “knockout game” attacks in Brooklyn, the NYPD said.
A 14-year-old girl and three other children, aged 10 and 11, were arrested in connection with three assaults that took place between October and November.
The victims included an 11-year-old boy who was punched on President Street, a youth who was hit with a rock while walking home from school and a youngster who was “mushed” in the face with a plastic bag, said Deputy Inspector George Fitzgibbon, the71st Precinct’s new commanding officer.
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While the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force worked on the investigation as well, police determined that the attacks were not motivated by bias.
“Every time one of these incidents did occur, nothing was ever said with regard to any kind of bias, so to speak,” Fitzgibbon said of the three attacks, which occurred in October and November.
“The only commonality is that basically all the victims were Jewish.”
Police made the arrests after zeroing in on the neighborhood’s middle-schoolers, who were both the victims and the suspects of several of the attacks.
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It was not immediately clear if the three incidents were part of the so-called “knockout game,” in which teens sucker-punch strangers in an attempt to knock them out, then flee without taking anything from them.
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Police are still investigating several other potential knockout incidents involving older victims.
