- The NYPD said a man accused of an antisemitic attack yelled "Kanye 2024" during the act.
- The suspect punched and insulted a Jewish man in Central Park on Wednesday, police said.
A man accused of an antisemitic attack on a Jewish man in Central Park yelled "Kanye 2024" as he struck, the NYPD said.
The remarks were an apparent reference to the string of antisemitic statements from Ye, formally known as Kanye West, which accompanied his announcement that he wants to be the next US president.
In an email to Insider, an NYPD spokesperson said the suspect was a man in his 40s, and attacked the 63-year-old man walking in Central Park at 7:37 p.m. Wednesday.
The suspect punched him in the head from behind, police said, knocking the man onto the ground where he broke his hand and chipped a tooth.
He took himself to a local hospital in stable condition, police said.
The attacker made antisemitic remarks, per police, then used a bicycle to leave. The NYPD said that he yelled "Kanye 2024" as he was going.
Surveillance footage depicted a man in the area with a bicycle, trailer, and a sign that read "Hungry Disabled."
Ye made himself a pariah with his public embrace of antisemitism in recent months.
In October, Twitter removed a tweet of his that said he was "going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE" in a garbled reference to DEFCON, the readiness system used by the US military.
On December 1, the rapper appeared with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes on Alex Jones' Infowars show, during which he praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. On the same day, Ye tweeted an image showing a Nazi swastika inside a Jewish Star of David, leading to him being suspended from Twitter.
In response, President Joe Biden condemned antisemitism in a tweet. "Our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides," he said.
Earlier this month, the NYPD said there were 45 antisemitism-motivated hate crimes across New York City in November, more than double that of the previous year, per The Jerusalem Post.
The NYPD said its Hate Crimes Task Force was investigating the attack but, as of Sunday, had not arrested anybody.