Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Man who yelled slurs, threw bottles at Jew in NYC gets probation

Myles Utz pleaded guilty to the hate crime for the antisemitic attack in 2024.

West Side Judaica & Bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Credit: Courtesy.
West Side Judaica & Bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Credit: Courtesy.

Myles Utz, 31, who previously pleaded not guilty to yelling antisemitic slurs and “Free Palestine” and throwing two glass bottles at a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke in 2024, has now pleaded guilty to a hate crime and assault using a weapon to cause injury.

The 2024 attack took place on Manhattan’s heavily Jewish Upper West Side on June 16, 2024, when Utz targeted the 25-year-old Jew near West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, according to prosecutors.

“The man moved out of the way to avoid being hit and the bottles shattered on the ground,” prosecutors said.

Footage of the incident that circulated on social media appeared to show Utz approach a 74-year-old Jewish man, who wearing a yarmulke, and yell “Free Palestine” and spit at the man.

Police arrested Utz on July 25, 2024. He was sentenced on March 4 to three years of probation, and he has to pay $375 in fees and must complete virtual treatment with the Queens Center for Change, according to court records.

Elana Stern, of the firm Ropes and Gray, told JNS that “no student and no family should have to experience what Eden and Montana Horwitz have had to experience.”
Roy Altman sees his work through the Jewish prism of judges who are “of the people, to understand the community in which they live, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations.”
Jon Husted’s press secretary said he joined the task force because of “violence against Jewish communities on the rise.”
“I have never seen an administration that can’t determine what is hate or antisemitism,” Simcha Felder told the New York Post.
Fragments had punctured the girl’s abdomen, causing severe liver damage.
“This student’s ability to exercise, freely, his religion should not be incompatible with his equally important right to fully participate in residential life at Williams,” Rachel Balaban, of the Brandeis Center, told JNS.