US attorney for New York John Sarcone claimed Friday that a knife-wielding illegal Salvadoran migrant who was charged with threatening to slit his throat was “going to kill somebody” if he didn’t step up to help get him off the streets.
Sarcone, the President Trump-appointed US attorney for the Northern District of New York, allegedly encountered a “crazy” Saul Morales-Garcia — a previously deported illegal migrant from El Salvador — outside the Hilton Hotel in Albany on Tuesday night.
Detailing the encounter, Sarcone said Morales-Garcia, 40, aggressively lunged at him multiple times on the street while screaming in a “foreign language” before he gestured he would slice his throat.
“I knew that if he got away, he was going to kill somebody,” Sarcone told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
“I could have easily just kept walking but I sensed that there was danger here.”
Sarcone said he noticed Morales-Garcia after leaving his office in downtown Albany and decided to keep an eye on him because he “definitely appeared to be up to something crazy.”
The federal prosecutor said he stopped outside the hotel to keep watch when the illegal migrant allegedly started screaming at him.
“I didn’t acknowledge him. I kept looking straight ahead. Then out of the corner of my eye, he starts coming towards me. I turned, I look at him. I still don’t say anything and then he pulls a knife out. He is screaming at me and then he charges at me,” Sarcone recalled.
Sarcone said he started running to the hotel lobby before the alleged perp suddenly stopped and started walking away.
The prosecutor immediately called the local sheriff on his personal line to alert him.
While waiting for law enforcement to arrive, Sarcone said he went back to the street and yelled out to Garcia-Morales to get his attention and prevent him from disappearing.
A screaming Morales-Garcia then allegedly charged at Sarcone yet again while making a throat-slitting gesture at Sarcone with the blade.
“I felt an obligation to the public as the chief Federal law enforcement officer in the district that includes the city of Albany,” Sarcone said in a statement in the wake of the alleged ordeal.
“I feared for my life but I couldn’t let this individual harm and potentially kill others.”
Morales-Garcia was taken into custody immediately after cops arrived on the scene, prosecutors said.
“US Attorney John Sarcone’s selfless actions likely saved lives,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said.
The alleged attempted slasher has been in the US illegally since 2021 after previously being deported. He has a criminal rap sheet in at least three other states outside New York, according to prosecutors.
Sarcone said Gov. Kathy Hochul had called him in the wake of the alleged attack after GOP lawmakers started blasting the state’s sanctuary city laws.
“She was very sympathetic and concerned and I said ‘these sanctuary cities aren’t working’,” he said of the phone call with Hochul.
Morales-Garcia has been charged with attempted second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, and menacing in the second degree.
He was remanded without bail following an initial hearing in Albany City Court.
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