A 12-year-old girl wearing a hijab was standing near her school in Brooklyn last Friday afternoon, waiting for her mother, when a woman walked up to her and punched her in the face, the police and a city councilor said.
The girl, who was struck in the eye and had to go to the hospital, was the third and final person assaulted by the woman on Jan. 30 in attacks targeting Muslims, according to the police and Kayla Santosuosso, a city councilwoman who represents southern Brooklyn. The assaults all took place in Bay Ridge, which has a large Muslim community, in a span of 11 minutes, the police said.
On Wednesday, the police said they had arrested Megan Horne, 34, of Staten Island, and charged her with 21 counts of assault, aggravated assault, menacing and acting in a manner injurious to a child. Six of the charges were considered hate crimes, according to court records.
Ms. Horne was scheduled to be arraigned in Kings County Criminal Court in Brooklyn on Thursday morning. The police did not say how they had linked Ms. Horne to the assaults and no lawyer was immediately listed for her in court documents.
The attacks drew swift condemnation from political leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who called the assaults “disgusting” and “Islamophobic” on social media.
“This violence is unacceptable,” said Mr. Mamdani in a post on X. “And we know that all too often visibly Muslim, hijab-wearing women and girls bear the brunt of it.”
The total number of hate crimes reported in the city fell by 12 percent in 2025 compared with 2024. While the number of antisemitic episodes also fell slightly last year, they accounted for more than half of all reported hate crimes, according to police figures. The number of hate crimes against Muslims also fell in 2025, the police said.
But last month, there were seven hate crimes against Muslims compared with zero during the same period a year earlier, according to police figures. The number of antisemitic episodes nearly tripled in January from 12 months earlier, according to the figures.
On Jan. 30, the attacker took a bus from Staten Island to Brooklyn, Ms. Santosuosso said. At about 2:25 p.m., a 33-year-old woman wearing a hijab was near 89th Street and Fifth Avenue when the attacker approached her and then pushed and kicked her while making “anti-Muslim remarks,” the police said.
Eight minutes later, the attacker pushed a 39-year-old woman in a hijab as she was trying to board a bus on 92nd Street, about four blocks away from the first assault, the police said.
The attacker then walked about a block to Fort Hamilton Parkway where the girl was standing with her school’s assistant principal waiting to be picked up, according to Ms. Santosuosso and the police.
The girl was punched so hard her eye began bleeding and she had to go to the hospital for treatment, said Ms. Santosuosso, who spoke with her family.
“The poor little girl was scared to go to school for a few days,” she said. The girl and her mother were relieved to hear of the arrest, but they “were both pretty traumatized,” Ms. Santosuosso said.
The attacks have unsettled residents in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood lined with mosques that is home to one of the largest populations of Arab Americans in the city and that some call “Little Yemen” and “Little Palestine.”
“We take pride in our large Muslim community and it’s really frustrating and disruptive when people start to feel fear as a result of actions like these,” Ms. Santosuosso said.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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