Grafton Thomas, the man suspected of stabbing five people in a rabbi’s house on Saturday in the United States, did he act out of anti-Semitic conviction?
When he assaulted this Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, 50 km from New York, on Saturday night, in the midst of the Hanukkah celebration, he had no particular words.
According to federal prosecutors, he entered the house of the Hasidic rabbi in Monsey shouting “no one comes out” and armed with a 45 cm long machete, before injuring, as if blindly, people within his reach. and to prosecute a man who has since testified.
When New York City police stopped his car, less than two hours after the attack, in Harlem, the suspect smelled of bleach and had traces of blood on his clothes.
Hitler research and swastika designs
Court documents released after the New Yorker was charged reveal that he made references to Nazi culture in personal writings, as well as drawings of swastikas. He is said to have recently searched the Internet, via his smartphone, for the phrase “Why Hitler hated the Jews” and the address of “Zionist temples”.
This is why the 37-year-old, tall, black man with a long beard and blurry eyes has been charged with four attempted hateful homicides and attempted burglary. His bail was raised to $ 5 million.
The indictments come as many political figures reacted and the Jewish community in New York State has suffered several assaults in recent weeks. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio denounced “a growing problem of anti-Semitism” in the United States which “is taking an increasingly violent form”.
“A long history of hospitalization”
Grafton Thomas pleaded not guilty on Sunday. His lawyer and family said Monday he had “a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations.” He would have suffered from depression and psychosis for years, to the point of having been hospitalized several times in 2019. And even arrested twice, one for threats, the other for endangerment.
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According to his lawyer Michael Sussman, the suspect would have, Saturday evening, “heard a voice which spoke to him of a good in this house”. He did not specify what “good” Thomas was looking for, adding that his client’s explanations, “not very coherent”, referred to “auditory hallucinations and some would say demons”.
The lawyer also explained to CNN that his client had probably stopped taking his drug treatment for “bipolar and schizophrenia.”
Thomas’s mother, a nurse at a New York hospital, declined to speak to the press. In its press release, the family assures us that he was “brought up in a home that welcomes and respects all religions and races.” A Methodist pastor who has known the suspect for a decade, Wendy Paige, also said he suffered from mental health problems and was “not a terrorist”.
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