Deranged attacker accused of stabbing teen tourists at Grand Central had been cut loose by NYC judge over prosecutors’ pleas
The troubled attacker who allegedly stabbed two teen tourists at Grand Central Terminal on Christmas morning was cut loose by a Bronx judge just weeks earlier — despite a string of violent busts in recent months, The Post has learned.
Prosecutors wanted Steven Hutcherson, 36, to be committed to a psychiatric program for randomly threatening a stranger on a Bronx street last month, but Judge Matthew Grieco instead gave the career criminal a conditional discharge that put him back on the street, records show.
Less than two weeks after that Dec. 12 hearing, Hutcherson allegedly went off the rails at a restaurant in the historic Midtown terminal, launching into an anti-white rant and knifing a 14-year-old girl and her 16-year-old sister, visiting the city from Paraguay with their family.
“If the judge had only held this individual accountable two innocent tourists, children, may have had a Merry Christmas instead of an ‘attempted murderous’ Christmas,” a law enforcement source said Wednesday.
“Now this is [their] permanent view of New York City — almost being murdered.”
Hutcherson, who also uses the name Esteban Estonia Asues, has been arrested at least 17 times over the last two decades — and the subject of more than a half dozen domestic violence complaints by a Manhattan woman he has allegedly stalked for over a year, according to sources.
He’s also had a string of encounters with cops for mental health disturbances, most recently on Dec. 5, when he was found acting unruly outside a Bronx apartment building and brought to St. Barnabas Hospital for psychiatric evaluation by police, the sources said.
Prior to that incident, officers found him standing on the fire escape of that same building on Mt. Hope Place screaming while refusing to come down on Nov. 27, according to the sources. Then too, he was brought to St. Barnabas Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Those incidents occurred as Hutcherson allegedly repeatedly got into trouble with the law in the last year, spending more than a month in jail after he was arrested in July for resisting arrest.
Sources said he had walked into a Bronx precinct stationhouse acting belligerent and refused to leave, prompting cops to arrest him and find a dagger and switchblade on him. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor weapon possession charges.
Hutcherson did another stint behind bars in October, spending more than a week in lockup after he was arrested for smashing a display case at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, causing $81,000 in damage, records show.
He pleaded guilty to second-degree menacing on Oct. 12, for which he also received a 15-day sentence.
Two weeks before the Christmas Day stabbings, Hutcherson was back in court facing Grieco in a case stemming from Nov. 7, when he randomly came up to a man outside his job in the Bronx and threatened him.
“Why are you working for white people? I’m going to kill this man” he yelled, according to victim Yussif Abdullahi.
“I’m gonna shoot you,” Hutcherson threatened, per the criminal complaint. “I don’t care what kind of green card the government gave you. Open your mouth and say something. I will shoot you right now.”
Police did not recover a gun, but found a knife with a red handle in his pocket when they arrested him, according to sources.
Hutcherson pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.
But Grieco, who was appointed to the bench by Mayor Adams in March after nearly 30 years in the court system, including serving as counsel to judges in Supreme Court and the Appellate Division, sentenced him to conditional discharge, over the objection of prosecutors.
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office “believed Mr. Hutcherson would benefit from substantial mental health programming, including inpatient treatment,” a spokesman said Wednesday.
Mental health treatment options were discussed with Hutcherson’s public defender and the judge, the rep said, but “Ultimately, through counsel, Mr. Hutcherson declined mental health programming and the transfer of his cases to the misdemeanor mental health treatment court.”
“Three cases were resolved via pleas to the top charge receiving 15 days jail, and in one case, the court delivered a sentence of a conditional discharge over the people’s objection,” the spokesman said.
A rep for the state Office of Court Administration said neither the DA or the defense attorney brought up the one-year mental health treatment program or transferring the case to mental health court at the Dec. 12 hearing.
“The Judge ordered individual counseling as part of a conditional discharge with the aim of further assessing what both parties concurred were underlying anger issues,” the spokesman said, adding that Hutcherson had been free since his Nov. 8 arraignment in the case.
Abdullahi, 46, said he was shocked that Hutcherson had been released, but not surprised he’d go on to be arrested again.
“The things he was saying, telling me, ‘Why are you working for white people?’ … Maybe he was sick. He needs to be institutionalized,” he told The Post Tuesday.
Hutcherson now faces charges of attempted murder, assault, weapons possession and endangering the welfare of a child — all as hate crimes — for Monday’s attack.
Prosecutors said Hutcherson had walked into French eatery Tartinery in the dining concourse at around 11:30 a.m. and was turned away by staff, prompting him to say, “I’ll leave. I don’t want the white man to get you.”
He allegedly returned and asked for a table, before barking “I don’t want to sit with the black people. I want to sit with the crackers,” according to the criminal complaint.
That’s when he allegedly pulled a knife out of his pocket and lunged at the teens, stabbing the 14-year-old in the thigh and her older sister in the back, sending her to the ICU with a collapsed lung, prosecutors said.
At his Manhattan Criminal Court hearing Tuesday night — where he was ordered held without bail — Hutcherson also was arraigned in two unrelated cases, including allegedly telling a stranger on Dec. 19 to “shut the f–k up or I’m going to blow your head off.”
The other case stemmed from Dec. 1, when he allegedly broke a restraining order by showing up to his ex-girlfriend’s mother’s door and confronting her in the lobby of her building while she waited for the elevator.
The 37-year-old woman had complaints that Hutcherson violated the order of protection eight times in the last year, according to sources.
“He’s emotionally unstable,” Charisma Knight told The Post on Wednesday about Hutcherson, whom she dated on and off in 2021 and 2022.
Hutcherson told her he suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but refused to take his medication or get treatment, she said.
“I feel like sometimes he wants to die,” she said. “He says and does these things to people because he wants them to react so that he doesn’t have to kill himself.”
The Legal Aid Society, which represents Hutcherson, declined to comment.
In a statement Wednesday, a City Hall spokesperson called the Christmas attack “deeply disturbing and unacceptable,” and said the safety of tourists was a high priority.
“This administration is also laser-focused on tackling the city’s mental health crisis, which is why we have launched and are implementing our plan to support New Yorkers living with untreated severe mental illness and experiencing homelessness.”
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy and Jack Morphet
