NEW YORK — The man accused of screaming “Allahu Akbar” before stabbing two strangers, including an Asian man and a Jewish resident, in a bloody broad-daylight spree on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was arrested on attempted murder charges Friday — but only one of the attacks was considered a hate crime, officials said.

Raul Morales, 51, was charged with attempted murder, assault, and weapons possession for both attacks, but only received hate crime charges for attacking the Jewish resident outside The Jewish Center on W. 86th St., where scores of community leaders and elected officials expressed fears that the attacks were fueled by hate and decried antisemitism early Friday.

The suspect raved at reporters as he was led out of the 20th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs Friday evening.

“Justice for Sandra and Lilian Romero! Justice for the Romero family! Justice for the Romero family!” Morales shouted at reporters as he was led into a New York Police Department vehicle. “Remember their names!”

When asked who Morales was talking about, a police source replied, “We have no idea. He’s a kook.”

With the added hate crime charges, Morales will face more stringent penalties if he’s convicted and sentenced for attacking his Jewish victim, officials said.

“I am thankful that he is being held accountable and hope he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement posted on X Friday. “This kind of despicable violence is not who we are as a city. Every New Yorker deserves to be safe, regardless of their religion or race.

Morales’ arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending.

“In a city where antisemitism continues to account for the largest share of reported hate crimes, year after year, a reality we desperately wish did not exist, fear has become a lived experience for far too many Jewish New Yorkers,” former City Councilman Mark Treyger, currently the Chief Executive Officer for the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, told reporters outside The Jewish Center, where 50-year-old Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus was attacked. “That is not normal.”

Grunhaus was stabbed in the chest during Thursday’s violent spree. According to police reports, his attacker, Morales, yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he attacked the congregant and an Asian man in a separate incident a few minutes earlier.

Video of the aftermath showed Grunhaus, lying on the sidewalk, pressing a napkin against his open wound.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch admitted Thursday that the NYPD’s initial investigation “suggests that mental health may have been a factor,” even though Morales has “no known mental health history with the NYPD.”

Julie Menin, who serves as the city council’s first Jewish speaker, said the Jewish community is “experiencing intolerable pain.”

“We cannot normalize what is happening in our city. We have to bring the temperature down. We have to change the rhetoric. Words matter, and we all have a responsibility to bring that temperature down,” said Menin, the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

“This is not acceptable to me. This is not just an Asian issue or Jewish issue,” added city council member Susan Zhuang, who is the first Chinese-American to rep Brooklyn. “The hate does not stop in one community. Hate continues when a Jewish New Yorker gets attacked, and New Yorkers are afraid. All New Yorkers are affected. Attacks motivated by hate against one is hate against all of us.”

UJA-Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein was the only one at the news conference to suggest that Mayor Mamdani may have fanned the flames of antisemitism earlier in the week when he posted a video vilifying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even though New York City doesn’t have the power to arrest the Israeli leader on war crime charges.

“We want the mayor to stop demonizing the only Jewish state, using the most vilifying rhetoric, focused solely on the only Jewish state and the supporters of it,” Goldstein demanded. “Using language like ‘monstrous,’ using the most horrible, difficult language that inflames, that terrorizes, that causes people to do terrible things and creates the community against whom it’s being said, feeling really being targeted, isolated, and unsafe.”

Goldstein called the video Mamdani put out “political grandstanding.”

“We need to be responsible. This is the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel,” he said. “His words have profound real-world consequences on us, and shame on him! Shame on him for doing this for perceived political benefit when it has real-world consequences for the Jews of New York. He must stop.”

In an interview with NY1 Friday morning, Mayor Mamdani said his comments about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “critiques not based on my personal analysis but rather on objective facts.”

“They are critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or a religion or a background and my responsibility as the mayor of this city is to keep every New Yorker safe, no matter where they come from, what they believe in, or frankly, even if they agree with my politics. My job is to keep them safe,” he continued.

At an unrelated event on Friday, Mamdani wished both of Morales’ victims a “full and speedy recovery.”

“My heart breaks for them and their families, for what they have had to experience,” he said.

“I want to make clear that this is a city where we have no tolerance for hatred of any kind,” he continued, adding that the city will hold anyone perpetrating hate accountable.

The violence began when Morales stabbed a 57-year-old Asian man in the back at W. 84th St. and Central Park West around 1:31 p.m., according to law enforcement.

Morales ran off and reappeared minutes later around the corner from The Jewish Center where he stabbed Grunhaus in the chest with a screwdriver.

Grunhaus had just attended Tisha B’Av services and had just left The Jewish Center when Morales jumped him around the corner, cops said.

Juan Garcia, a local restaurant worker, watched as the stabber attacked the second victim.

“He was a Jewish guy with a yarmulke,” Garcia, 26, said. “He was on his knees. He was bleeding from the right side. The screwdriver was on the floor.”

Both victims were taken to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital where they’re expected to survive.

“According to victim and witness statements, Morales yelled “Allahu Akbar” during both attacks,” Tisch said.

Allahu Akbar means “God is Most Great” in Arabic.

“I’m just in shock,” Grunhaus’ relative, Avi Grunhaus, who lives in Maryland, told The New York Daily News. “I got in my car, and I should be in the city in a few hours.”

At Grunhaus’ building, a short walk from The Jewish Center, his 65-year-old neighbor described the victim as “a very nice man” who keeps to himself.

“He’s very introverted. It’s just a terrible disaster. I can only imagine how he feels,” said the neighbor, who only gave her name as Helen. “He’s a very long-term resident here. I know he’s a very wonderful man. It’s terrible and especially in this neighborhood it’s very rare.”

Cops alerted to the attacks were flagged down by a good Samaritan who spotted Morales entering his NYCHA apartment building on Amsterdam Ave. near W. 89th St. Police arrested Morales inside the building, according to police sources.

Morales’ roommate refused to comment on the arrest Friday and slammed the door on a Daily News reporter’s face.

Witnesses told the Daily News a UPS delivery worker was the good Samaritan who tailed Morales and alerted police.

“I want to commend the bravery of a good Samaritan who led our officers to the location where the perpetrator was hiding, as well as our NYPD cops who brought an end to the incident without further injuries,” Tisch said.

Morales has been arrested seven times in New York City, including multiple busts for drug-related offenses, police sources said.

The NYPD investigated 178 antisemitic hate crimes in the city by the end of June, four more than the first six months of 2025, a 2% increase. Jewish hate crimes, however, represent 55% of all hate crimes investigated in the five boroughs, officials said.

In comparison, hate crimes against Muslims jumped by 50% in the first half of the year, from 14 last year to 21, officials said.

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(Josephine Stratman contributed to this report.)

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