On Thursday, a Muslim woman in New York City claimed she was attacked by a white male who called her a terrorist and slashed her cheek with a knife before running away. On Friday, police announced the as-yet unnamed 20-year-old slashed her own cheek, giving herself a two-inch cut, and invented the hate crime story.
The young woman described her imaginary attacker as a “white man wearing a black hat and a black jacket.” Here is the Associated Press story on today’s developments, in its entirety, headlined “NYPD: Woman Made Up Story About Manhattan Slashing Attack”:
Police say a woman who claimed she was slashed in the face by a stranger in Lower Manhattan has recanted her story.
The New York Police Department said Friday that their investigation revealed that the woman’s wound was self-inflicted.
They say the 20-year-old woman was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.
Police say the woman reported a random attack Thursday afternoon and told police a man grabbed her and slashed her on the left side of her face. Police say she told them that the man called her a terrorist during the attack.
Authorities say her injuries aren’t life-threatening.
She originally claimed he called her a “f**king terrorist,” according to the New York Post.The Associated Press leaves its readers to guess the rest of the details.
The Post adds that the woman is of “Middle Eastern descent” and is a student at the Make-up Designory beauty school, located only a few steps away from where she claimed she was attacked.
She confessed her story was false at Bellevue Hospital Center, after the police “scoured the area and checked surveillance video without finding any evidence of the attack,” according to the Post.
NBC News notes that, in addition to the phony hate-crime aspect of the story, a falsified slashing attack is not welcome news for New Yorkers, as actual slashings and stabbings have spiked by over 20 percent this year.
“The NYPD says most of that increase is being driven by a large number of cases in the Bronx and in public housing, with incidents described as emotion-driven and examples of domestic violence – not random acts of violence,” NBC reports. “Police officials have tried to downplay fears of a slashing spree and says New Yorkers are only focused on the uptick because other major crimes are down. But they acknowledge concerns about violence in dense public settings.”
