A Manhattan Beach man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a 2018 hate crime assault in Flatbush, according to the District Attorney’s office.
Aleksejs Saveljevs, 34, was sentenced by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun following a gulity plea for first-degree attempted assault as a hate crime for stabbing a 57-year-old Black woman without provocation on a subway platform.
“This defendant viciously assaulted a fellow subway rider for no other reason than the color of her skin,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. “Acts of hatred are not tolerated in Brooklyn, a place that prides itself on the diversity of its communities. I hope this sentence sends a clear message that racism and intolerance are unwelcomed here.”
According to the District Attorney, on Nov. 9, 2018, Saveljevs approached the victim from behind on the platform of the Church Avenue station in Flatbush after she got off the Q train, grabbed her, and hit her several times on her shoulder and upper back.
A bystander approached and helped the victim up the stairs while the attacker hurled racial epithets at them. The bystander then told the assailant to back off and Saveljevs fled the scene, while the victim spit up blood at the top of the stairs.
When emergency personnel first examined the victim, they found no serious injuries. But when the victim went home and went to sleep, she began to vomit while in bed, discovered bloodstains on her sheets, and realized she had been stabbed in the back, according to the report.
The victim was hospitalized for over a week and treated for a collapsed lung. Following her release, while going through the items she was carrying at the time of the assault, she found a screwdriver that did not belong to her and called the police.
The attacker’s DNA, which was in the city’s database due to a previous case, was found on the screwdriver.
Saveljevs also faces an additional two to four years in prison for assaulting an off-duty police officer the day before the hate crime, who was walking his dog along Williams Court near E. 11th Street in Sheepshead Bay when Saveljevs walloped him in the face unprovoked with a sharp object and yelled “I am going to f—- you up!” The officer suffered a broken cheekbone and required several staples to treat cuts to his head and face.
