A 17‑year‑old student in Queens is accused of sending antisemitic emails threatening to kill Jews to multiple people at his high school, according to police and sources who spoke to PIX11.
The NYPD said the messages were sent at about 12:34 p.m. on Monday to individuals at the Renaissance Charter School on 81st Street in Jackson Heights.
Sources said the emails explicitly referenced killing Jews, though it was not immediately clear who received them.
Police arrested the student a few hours later. He has been charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime and making a terroristic threat.
The incident comes amid a rise in antisemitic attacks in New York.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, a Queens rabbi was assaulted in the Forest Hills neighborhood in a suspected antisemitic attack.
Last Wednesday evening, a man was filmed repeatedly driving a car into the doors of a synagogue at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
According to newly released data by the NYPD, antisemitic hate crimes in New York City rose 182% year over year in January 2026.
The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force investigated 31 antisemitic hate crimes last month, compared to 11 in January 2025, and "accounted for more than half of all the hate crime incidents in January," the NYPD stated.
The year-on-year rise in antisemitic hate crimes coincides with the first month of the administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose election sparked concerns of growing antisemitism in the city with the largest Jewish population in America.
On his first day in office, Mamdani issued an executive order revoking all orders signed by his predecessor, Eric Adams, after September 26, 2024. This meant that the city’s recognition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) was revoked, as well as an Adams order prohibiting mayoral appointees and agency staff from boycotting and disinvesting from Israel.