Brooklyn Man Gets 10 Years For Violent Subway Hate Crime: DA

BROOKLYN, NY — A Brooklyn man will spend 10 years in prison for violently attacking a Black woman while hurling racist and sexist slurs in 2018, prosecutors announced this week.

Aleksejs Saveljevs, 34, was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for the hate crime, where he stabbed a 57-year-old woman in the back while she was getting off the Q train at Church Avenue station on November evening.

Saveljevs, who was originally charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted assault as a hate crime for the attack, prosecutors said.

“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 hate 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.”

Police tracked down Saveljevs with help from the 57-year-old woman he attacked after she found a screwdriver that wasn't hers — and that was later found to have Saveljevs' DNA on it — inside her lunch bag two days after the attack, prosecutors said.

Saveljevs had come up behind the woman as she was walking on the train platform around 7:30 p.m. on November 9, 2018 and hit her while yelling "You (expletive) black (expletive)," according to prosecutors.

With the help of a witness who told Saveljevs to back off, the woman was helped up the stairs and eventually examined by emergency responders, who sent her home after filing a police report.

The woman would only realize she'd been stabbed when she started vomiting blood and found blood on her sheets later that night, officials said.

She called 911 and spent six days in the hospital with a collapsed lung.

Saveljevs, who is from Manhattan Beach, will also serve two to four years concurrently with his 10-year sentence for a separate attack on a police officer. He also pleaded guilty to that attack, which happened the day before the hate crime, prosecutors said.

In that attack, Saveljevs hit an off-duty cop in the head with a sharp object while the officer was walking his dog in Sheepshead Bay. The officer was treated for a broken cheek bone and received staples and stitches to the cuts on his head and face, prosecutors said.

The cop would later identify Saveljevs in a line-up. Saveljev's building manager also identified him from surveillance images taken on the day of the attack, prosecutors said.