How attackers hurled racist interracial slurs at mixed couple
A couple of bigots spewed an aggressive racist interracial attack on a white woman with a black man. The racist pair used the N word and also threatened to kill the black man and then ferociously beat the interracial couple.
Anna 38, is white (from Moldova) and is dating John, 42, who is black (from Trinidad). The two were attacked by the bigots outside Coney Island Hospital. Much as there have been incidents of hate and racism against interracial couples, this is the first time Anna and John were being attacked for being a white woman black man couple.
“I feel like I’m back 50 years ago or something”, Anna told the DailyNews Brooklyn. She also said that she had never experienced any hate from people who live around her before the incident.
The couple was preparing for their 6th-anniversary celebrations when they ran into the two accused racist tormentors, Bernard Szurant and Rudolph Evmenenko. On fateful Saturday, Anna and John were crossing E. 17th St. and Ave. R in Sheepshead Bay at 5:50 a.m. after having packed their vehicle when Szurant and Evmenenko bombarded them with hate-filled rants.
According to the couple and the police reports, Szurant, 25, and Evmenenko, 27, began screaming at them: “This is our neighborhood you f—–g n—–! Get out of here” and threatened to “crack [John] open”. As Anna recalled, the two assailants were drinking since their speech was pretty slurred.
That’s when they started torturing John. As Anna puts it, much as the two were much shorter than John, they still kept at it. “They couldn’t hit him because he’s tall and they were smaller… they literally attached to his body and wouldn’t let go. Like leeches”, she said.
Being the gentleman he is, John’s main priority was Anna’s safety. He was trying to protect her by being the barrier between the assailants and his girlfriend.
Then the insults and threats escalated, calling John a “f—–g charcoal burner”. These insults and threats of violence paralyzed John saying: “They said something about ‘I want to lynch your a–’ or something like that. They know enough about black history to know that, apparently”.
Then the attack continued. The tormentors jumped him, hitting him continually on his face, gashing him on his hand as he tried to protect himself. “A couple times they feigned that they had a weapon, acted like they had a gun, and that was a bit unnerving,” John said. “I said to him, ‘You’re not a man if you can’t use your hands.’”
Well, Anna didn’t just sit and watch these men hitting her man. She jumped in and began kicking them. And then came the begging and praying to God to help them. The whole torment lasted about 10 minutes which seemed like a lifetime to this couple “as far as fights go”.
Much as they tried to seek help calling 911, Evmenenko whacked Anna’s cell phone and continued with the beating. The beatings went on until the time when the cops arrived at the scene and yanked the assailants off John. They two were taken into custody.
Szurant didn’t go without a fight. He started with his racist tirade, threatening a black NYPD cop telling him how he knew him saying: “I know where you work. I am going to come to the 61st Precinct and f—— kill you, you f—— n—–.”
Szurant and Evmenenko were charged with assault, harassment, intimidation and criminal mischief. Szurant was charged with an additional count of harassment for threatening the black cop.
The two were released from jail after a brief stay in prosecution and the judge ordered them to stay away from John and Anna.
According to the New York crime news, Szurant has an extensively long wrap sheet of 21 arrests. This is something that is really worrying John. One of his neighbors attested to this saying how police have come like “50 million times” because of threatening his mom with a knife.
As anyone who might go through such an ordeal would be, Anna and John are scarred. But they have decided not to let this ruin their relationship. If anything they are closer than ever.
John said: “I’ve always felt that living in this part of Brooklyn there is this sort of deep-seated racism. For them to make that attack based on pure racism is a sad sort of commentary on where we are at in this society at this given time. It’s disappointing, it was scary, it was unnerving.”
Clearly, for John, this racist interracial ordeal made him reflect on the culture around him.