Black Man Slashed Woman’s Neck in Brooklyn ‘Because She Was White’
Chris Pleasance, Daily Mail, March 22, 2016
A black man arrested for randomly slashing a woman’s neck in Brooklyn says he attacked her because she is white and because ‘the system’ stopped him from smoking weed openly.
Gregory Alfred, 25, who was arrested two days ago after attacking Janina Popko, 53, in Brooklyn earlier this month, has now told police his crime was racially motivated.
Gregory Alfred
Alfred, who was wearing an American flag bandanna across his face at the time of the attack, said he headed out on March 10 looking for white people to stab, the New York Post reports.
At the corner of Beverley and Rugby Road in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn he happened across Popko, who was texting on her phone at the time.
Alfred is accused of running up behind Popko and slashing her across the neck before fleeing, leaving her bleeding on the pavement.
Popko needed 13 stitches following the slashing, one of a string of similar attacks across New York City, with doctors saying if the wound had been half an inch longer, it would have severed an artery.
Alfred, from New Jersey, was turned over to police by his mother after she saw news coverage of the attack.
Police say Alfred left the knife used in the crime at the scene, and fingerprints found on the handle matched Alfred.
A police spokesman said: ‘[Alfred] had bought paring knives and kitchen knives and said he was going to stab people. Clearly he is a disturbed man and should never have been out in the street.’
Popko added: ‘I’m very lucky to be okay. I am still shaky. I never was racial. I grew up in Poland, they never teach us to be racial. I didn’t grow up with this racial thing.’
