Police on the hunt for teen who punched trans girl in the face outside New York high school

Police are searching for a young man thought to be a teenager, who punched a 15-year-old trans girl in the face outside a New York high school.

According to ABC7 New York, the young girl was assaulted on 18 January, outside W H Maxwell Career and Technical Education High School in Brooklyn.

The suspect reportedly made transphobic remarks during the attack, in which he punched the 15-year-old in the face multiple times, and continued to harass her via social media afterwards.

The Daily Mail reported that the victim told New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Hate Crimes Task Force detectives that she did not know the suspect.

She suffered minor injuries and bruising to her face, but refused medical attention.

Police released a photo of the young girl’s suspected attacker on Friday (4 February), in the hopes that the public will be able to identify him.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident can confidentially report it by calling the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

Information can also be submitted by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

In 2021, the NYPD reported that hate crimes had increased by 100 per cent compared with 2020. For anti-LGBT+ hate crimes specifically, incidents jumped by 193 per cent, with 29 victims in 2020 and 85 victims in 2021.

In December a gay man, also in Brooklyn, was beaten with a metal pipe and robbed of his walker while he was trying to bring food to homeless people. His attackers shouted homophobic slurs and shattered his eye socket.

Anti-Asian incidents increased by 361 per cent, a horrifying trend seen in many places around the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The most frequent hate crimes in New York were against Jewish people, with 183 anti-Semitic incidents taking place in 2021 and 121 taking place in 2020, an increase of 51 per cent.