NEW YORK – The Greenwood Lake man, who allegedly entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey on December 28, 2019, and wounded five people with an 18-inch machete, has been charged with additional federal hate crimes.
Grafton Thomas was indicted by a federal grand jury with five counts of willfully causing bodily injury to five victims because of the victims’ religion and five counts of obstructing the free exercise of religion in an attempt to kill.
Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said the government now alleges that Thomas “did this with the intention of targeting his victims because of their religion.”
He faces life in prison “for his alleged violent acts of prejudice and intolerance,” Berman said.
Thomas had entered the rabbi’s home, adjacent to his synagogue, during observances related to the end of the Sabbath and the seventh day of Hanukkah. He declared to dozens of congregants there that “no one is leaving,” and attacked the group. At least five people were hospitalized with serious injuries, including slash wounds, deep lacerations, a severed finger, and a skull fracture.
He then fled in a car to New York City where police nabbed him and seized the machete and other evidence including handwritten journals with anti-Semitic references.
Thomas also faces state charges in Rockland County.
His family attorney, Michael Sussman, maintains Thomas is not anti-Semitic, but rather is emotionally and mentally disturbed and has called for an independent psychological review of the man.
