Police probing possible hate crime where yelling man allegedly pulled girl's hijab on NYC subway

The NYPD confirmed Tuesday it was investigating an incident where an unidentified man allegedly accosted a 16-year-old girl and pulled on her hijab on a southbound 5 train last week as a possible hate crime.

The incident occurred as the train was approaching the Union Square station in Manhattan around 9 a.m. last Wednesday, police said Monday. There have yet to be any arrests.

According to an NYPD spokesperson, the suspect allegedly stated during the incident, "You're a terrorist. You don't belong in this country."

Burhan Carroll, a legal fellow for the New York Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the organization has noticed a significant increase in calls about Islamophobic and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination.

"We've been flooded with calls lately, requests for assistance" Carroll told NBC. "People are scared. They're very frightened just to go about their daily business."

Last week, a man was arrested for allegedly assaulting a teenager and trying to remove his turban on a New York City bus while saying, “We don’t wear that in this country and take that mask off,” according to officials.

Officials said last week there has not yet been a statistically significant uptick in local hate crimes, but the NYPD has remained on high alert since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

The NYPD recorded three anti-Muslim and 20 anti-Jewish hate crimes during the one-week period ending Sunday, new data shared with Gothamist showed, bringing the total number of reported hate crime complaints against Muslims so far this year to 12, and against Jews to 196, police said.

The NYPD defines a hate crime as being motivated by bias against certain personal characteristics, while harassment is defined as an action intended to annoy or alarm another person.

This story has been updated with new information. Contributed reporting by Brittany Kriegstein, Arya Sundaram, and Amanda Rozon.