7 Indicted In Times Square Migrant Brawl With NYPD: DA
NEW YORK CITY — Seven men have been indicted in a caught-on-video Times Square attack on NYPD officers that has become a flash point in the debate over the city’s migrant crisis.
The new charges unveiled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Thursday range from second-degree assault to tampering with physical evidence.
Bragg said five of those indicted were arrested last week, while two more remain on the loose.
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At least four more people who were seen in footage kicking and attacking cops in the Jan. 27 brawl remain unidentified, he said.
“Plain and simple: the behavior is despicable,” he said.
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Bragg, alongside Mayor Eric Adams, offered fresh details that he hoped would clear up “misinformation” on the assault.
The attack began about 8:35 p.m. as twp cops tried to clear up a crowd outside 220 W. 42nd St., which is being used as a shelter for asylum seekers, Bragg said.
When one cop grabbed and wrestled with Yohenry Brito, several other men attacked the police, Bragg said.
“Mr. Brito is quite literally at the center of this assault,” he said.
Darwin Andrews Gomez-Isquiel and Yorman Reveron are accused of grabbing officers, Bragg said. Two more men, whose indictments remain sealed, assaulted, kicked and grabbed the cops, he said.
Another man — Kelvin Servita Arocha — didn’t touch the cops himself, but is accused of striking one officer’s radio, Bragg said.
A final man — Wilson Juarez — gave up his jacket to one of the attackers, an act that complicated the effort to identify the assailants, Bragg said.
Bragg also decried “misinformation” that popped up in the controversy since the attack, notably a report that four attackers had been apprehended in Arizona afterward.
Indeed, the Jan. 27 brawl has become a flash point over how the city’s migrant crisis affects public safety.
Some conservatives — as vividly illustrated on a misleading Fox News segment featuring Curtis Sliwa — argue the scuffle highlights growing lawlessness in the city.
But others, including Adams, argue that paints asylum seekers with a xenophobic broad brush — a point, again, arguably illustrated by Sliwa admitting he believed a New Yorker roughed up by his Guardian Angels in Times Square was a migrant because he spoke Spanish.
Adams repeated that the assault doesn’t represent the 170,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the city.
“There is a small minority that participate in illegal behavior,” he said.
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