D.C. police are investigating a vicious assault in the Foggy Bottom area as a hate crime.
“The children in Gaza. The children in Palestine. We know! We know who you are!” the suspect said while in custody in a video recorded by the victim, whose hands were still shaking after the attack.
Ariel Golfeyz, 31, told police the man blindsided him as he walked to the Foggy Bottom Metro station to go to work just after 8 a.m. Wednesday.
“I just see a fist, and then by the time I see the fist, I hear a noise, and the noise is just your jaw making all that noise,” he said.
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Golfeyz said his attacker knocked him to the ground and repeatedly punched him while yelling anti-Jewish statements about the war in Gaza, calling him a murderer.
Golfeyz, who is Jewish, says he was wearing a yarmulke, also called a kippah.
A security officer from George Washington University Hospital intervened, detaining the attacker on a bench in the park until D.C. police arrived, according to court documents.
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Walter James, 38, was charged with simple assault motivated by hate or bias, the documents say.
Golfeys suffered cuts and bruises in the assault. He said the shocking, random attack made him rethink his safety.
“I was telling some friends yesterday, I was like, ‘You know, after this, I don’t think it’s safe to wear a kippah … or anything like that in public in Washington, D.C., because of what’s going on,” he said.
Last Friday, James was arrested for entering an unauthorized area outside the U.S. Capitol and fighting with officers who tried to detain him. It’s not clear what happened during his court appearance for that crime or why he was back on the street.
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