Some of his friends — and his girlfriend — are Jewish, the
man accused of bashing an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn as part of a “knockout
game’’ insisted as he was sprung Saturday night on a paltry $750 bail.
“I never hit the guy,” Amrit “Chris’’ Maragh, 28, said after
he was arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on charges of misdemeanor assault,
menacing and harassment in the attack on Shmuel Perl, 24, early Friday.
Maragh, a barber, has been identified by Perl as the man he
heard yapping about the “knockout game” with three pals on a Borough Park
street corner and then belted him in the head. Maragh was not charged with a
hate crime.
“My girlfriend’s Jewish,” Maragh insisted of an unidentified
woman who came to court to wait for his release.
“He has a lot of Jewish friends,” added Dagoberto Hernandez,
38, one of the three friends arrested with Maragh that night, but ultimately
not charged.
“None of us touched him,” Hernandez said of Perl. “He was
there, and he walked away fast. Less than 10 minutes later, we were arrested.”
There was “no exchange of words whatsoever,” with Perl,
Maragh said.
Added another arrested pal, James Santa Cruz, 31: “We don’t
play those childish kid games.”
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