Suspect Charged In Friday Morning Assault On 18th Avenue, Released On $750 Bail

A man has been charged with assault, menacing, and harassment after punching a neighbor in the face early Friday morning on 18th Avenue, says The New York Times.

The paper says 28-year-old Amrit Marajh and friends were walking down the street around 2:45am on November 22 when they crossed paths with Shmuel Perl, a 24-year-old Jewish man who told cops he heard them discussing knocking him out before being attacked by Marajh.

The Daily News says Marajh and friends were leaving a McDonald Avenue bar, and police at the 66th Precinct said that at least one of the men in the group had used an anti-Semitic slur during the attack.

While the assault was initially suspected to be an occurrence of “knockout,” the possible phenomenon that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is now questioning the existence of at all, and cops originally said Marajh was being charged with a hate crime, Marajh says he is not anti-Semitic and that he and his friends were simply discussing boxing–and, he tells the times, he never even hit Perl. The hate crime charges were never pressed, and Marajh was released on $750 bail.