A 31-year-old man was arrested Wednesday for beating two Muslim teens outside a Brooklyn mosque, officials said.
Christopher Vallaro was hit with assault charges after he surrendered to cops for the 1 a.m. attack Sunday outside the Madine Muslim Community Center on Third Ave. near 53rd St. in Sunset Park. His arraignment was pending.
The two 16-year-old boys tried to talk to Vallaro’s girlfriend — attempting to open the woman’s door and poke their heads into her window — for a half hour before the suspect emerged and jumped them, calling one of the victims a “f---ing terrorist.”
“You Muslims are the cause of all the problems in the world!” the man screamed.
The attack wasn’t labeled a hate crime because it was sparked by the teens’ ogling the suspect’s girlfriend, not their religion, cops said.
Still, the chief prosecutor for hate crimes at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was speaking to detectives, signaling a major reappraisal of the case, sources with knowledge of the alleged beating said.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that the attack be investigated as a bias crime because of the epithets.
An NYPD spokesman said the derogatory statements “were made in the heat of the moment and were not a motivating factor.”
Christopher Vallaro was hit with assault charges after he surrendered to cops for the 1 a.m. attack Sunday outside the Madine Muslim Community Center on Third Ave. near 53rd St. in Sunset Park. His arraignment was pending.
The two 16-year-old boys tried to talk to Vallaro’s girlfriend — attempting to open the woman’s door and poke their heads into her window — for a half hour before the suspect emerged and jumped them, calling one of the victims a “f---ing terrorist.”
“You Muslims are the cause of all the problems in the world!” the man screamed.
The attack wasn’t labeled a hate crime because it was sparked by the teens’ ogling the suspect’s girlfriend, not their religion, cops said.
Still, the chief prosecutor for hate crimes at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was speaking to detectives, signaling a major reappraisal of the case, sources with knowledge of the alleged beating said.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that the attack be investigated as a bias crime because of the epithets.
An NYPD spokesman said the derogatory statements “were made in the heat of the moment and were not a motivating factor.”
