A woman riding the New York City subway on Sunday screamed that “Jews are eating kids!” before assaulting a Jewish woman on the train, choking her and ripping her hair out, according to video footage and police.
She now faces hate crime charges.
Partial footage of the incident shared online by the Combat Antisemitism Movement shows the suspect, named by police as Diana Smith, 23, of the Bronx, cupping her hand to her mouth and shouting, “So Jews, Jews are eating kids!”
In jump cuts included in the 19-second video, she repeats the smear, and says, “You’re a Jew, I smell the kids,” and “It’s okay for her to eat a kid, but I can’t choke her down?” The camera then turns to a woman whose face is blurred, who says, “I was just assaulted.”
The victim, also 23, is a nurse from Montreal who now lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and has withheld her name. She told the New York Post that the suspect shoved, kicked and choked her, and pulled a clump of her hair out. She said she suffered a concussion.
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The suspect was arrested and charged with hate crime assault as well as the hate crime of criminal obstruction of breathing, and aggravated harassment, the NYPD told The Times of Israel. In the video, the suspect appears to be wearing a military-style camouflage coat with a patch depicting the German tricolor flag.
Police said the incident occurred on an E Train at Canal Street in downtown Manhattan shortly after 2 p.m. on Sunday, and that the victim was treated for “minor injuries” at the scene.
“Officers were informed by a 23-year-old female victim that an unknown individual approached her and made antisemitic remarks,” the NYPD said in a statement. “The individual then repeatedly struck the victim about the body and pushed her to the floor.”
???????? NYC, May 31, 2026: A 23 year old Jewish woman sent CAM footage of her assault on a subway train.
Around 2:15 PM, a woman told her she could “smell the babies” she had eaten and yelled that “Jews eat babies” before choking her, throwing her to the ground, and beating her. pic.twitter.com/4yMygy3EEb
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) June 3, 2026
The canard that Jews use the blood or bodies of non-Jewish children for ritual purposes, an age-old antisemitic conspiracy theory known as the blood libel, has inspired repeated attacks on Jews worldwide for centuries.
Before the reported assault, the suspect talked to other passengers “about the dangers of Jews stealing wealth” and said, “You could always see the reflection of a Jew,” the Jewish woman told the Post.
The woman, who is Orthodox, said that the suspect then turned to her and smiled “a very eerie smile.” The woman then recalled saying, “So you see my reflection?” and said the suspect responded, “Yeah, and I smell it on you too.”
She added that she felt unprotected once the suspect began screaming at her and attacking her.
“I was a ragdoll and I couldn’t defend myself — there should have been a human barricade around me,” she told the Post. “No one stepped up until it was too late.”
She got out at the next subway stop, and another rider pressed an emergency button that alerted the cops to arrest the attacker, the Post reported.
“When I had to identify her, a ton of people were like, ‘Oh, we saw what happened, are you okay?’ And that was extremely triggering for me, because of course I’m not okay. I kept just thinking, ‘I’m not in Nazi Germany,’” she told the Post.
NYPD officers are seen ahead of the annual Israel Day Parade on Sunday, June 2, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Sunday was also the day of New York’s annual Israel parade, called Israel Day on Fifth. The parade, one of the flagship annual events of New York City’s Jewish community, was attended by leading New York and Israeli officials, though not by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in a break from longstanding precedent. No attacks took place at the parade itself, which was under heavy security, according to police.
Jews make up about 10 percent of the city’s population and are targeted in hate crimes in the city more than all other groups combined every month, according to NYPD data.
Luke Tress contributed to this report.
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