NYPD searches for man who broke woman’s vertebrae in ‘anti-gay’ subway attack

New York police are searching for a man who allegedly fractured a woman’s spine after yelling an anti-gay slur at her on the subway.

Police have shared a video showing the middle aged man on the subway on November 30 when the incident occurred. They have described him as being somewhere between the ages of 50 and 60.

The incident took place in Queens.

The suspect “used a slur about the victim's sexual orientation & pushed her to the ground from behind causing injury,” the New York Police Department (NYPD) said in a tweet accompanying the video.

The NYPD’s Hate Crime Unit are investigating the incident, according to the New York Daily News. The woman was assaulted after the assailant reportedly saw her get kissed on the cheek by another woman.

That newspaper reports that the man then called the woman a “d***” before pushing her to the ground.

The suspect, in the video released by the NYPD, is wearing a camouflage vest with a black long sleeved sweater underneath. He is also wearing a beanie, and sunglasses. He appears to also have a goatee.

The United States has seen a spike in the number of hate crimes in recent years, with many of America’s largest cities reporting that the crimes have been increasingly common in the past four years.

A study released earlier this year found that hate crimes in Americas 10 largest cities spiked for the fourth year in a row in 2017, up by 12 per cent.

In the past year, a number of antisemitic targeting has occurred in New York City alone, shocking inhabitants of the city, which has the largest Jewish population in the United States.

The NYPD has indicated that Jewish hate crimes have made up around half of the city’s hate crimes committed this year.