5 Attacks in Past Week in Midtown 'Anti-Woman,' Cops Say

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The NYPD said on Thursday that five attacks against women in Midtown during the past week were being investigated as "anti-woman" rather than motivated by Islamophobia, the New York Daily News reported. NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said police believe the suspects to be two teenagers around 16 years old, both wearing tank tops.

No arrests have been made, and the investigation is ongoing, Boyce said Thursday.

The first incident reported to police occurred Saturday night, when a man approached a 35-year-old woman named Nemariq Al-Hinai, who police sources said was dressed in traditional Muslim garb, and lit her sleeve on fire.

The incident happened as Al-Hinai was window shopping in front of the Valentino store on Fifth Avenue between 54th and 55th streets. The NYPD mobilized its Hate Crime Task Force, suspecting the attack might have been motivated by Islamophobia. The attack against Al-Hinai was reported to police at 8:58 p.m.

The police released an announcement the next day about two similar incidents that occurred the same night.

At 8:45 p.m., five people (two women and three men) approached a woman at 727 Fifth Ave., and a man wearing a white T-shirt came up from behind her and appeared to ignite a lighter next to her leg, police said. The woman was uninjured, and she walked north toward East 57th Street while the group walked southbound on Fifth Avenue, police said.

At 10 p.m., two women were walking down the staircase to the D, F train platform at the 42nd Street-Bryant Park train station when a man placed a flame near their arms, they told police. The women said the man was black, around 6 feet tall, wearing a white T-shirt and holding a black backpack and a lighter, they said. They also saw he was "in the company of others," according to the police. When the two women boarded the F train heading north to Queens, the group of people fled, the women recounted.

Police released video early Tuesday morning of the suspects leaving the scene of the reported attack against Al-Hinai.

Image from Shutterstock, video courtesy of NYPD