Career criminal Steven Hutcherson, 36, stabbed two girls aged 14 and 16 on Christmas morning, after being refused service at the Grand Central Dining Concourse in New York City.
Hutcherson, who is black, declared, “I want to sit next to the crackers” after staff told him he could not occupy a table at the Tartinery café-bar without ordering anything. He soon turned his ire on the two girls and their parents, who were tourists from South America.
Returning with a knife, Hutcherson reportedly yelled, “I want all the white people dead,” before he stabbed the 16-year-old in the back, damaging her lungs. He then plunged the blade into her 14-year-old sister’s thigh. Armed transit police were on the scene in under a minute, but he avoided being shot by dropping the weapon as soon as they appeared. Both victims were hospitalized, but have since been discharged.
Hutcherson has 17 prior arrests. He was charged with showing up at a police station in July with a dagger and a switchblade and scuffling with officers. He has also been charged with causing $81,000 in damages during a rampage at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in October. He only received 15-day sentences for these crimes, however, thanks to New York’s soft-on-crime Attorney General Letitia James.
As recently as November, he was charged after threatening to shoot a man and allegedly brandishing a firearm. He was found with a knife when police apprehended him, but was let off with a conditional discharge.
“They shouldn’t have let him out [of jail]. I don’t believe it,” said the victim in that case after being told about the stabbings.
Donald Trump has accused New York prosecutors of being overly focused on pursuing him through the courts for political reasons, as the Big Apple becomes increasingly lawless.