BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — A Brooklyn man faces attempted murder charges for the violent racial attack that stunned the city in November, when an attacker shouting "Black b----" punched and stabbed a Q train rider, and police let her walk home with a punctured lung.

Aleksejs Saveljevs, 33, was charged with attempted murder, assault and menacing as a hate crime for stabbing Ann Marie Washington, 57, on the Church Avenue station platform 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 9, police and prosecutors said. Police tracked him down with help from Washington, who found a screwdriver that wasn't hers — and that was later found to have Saveljevs' DNA on it — inside her lunch bag two days after the attack, prosecutors said.

Saveljevs allegedly hurled racial and gendered slurs at the woman, punched her in the mouth, stabbed her in the back and fought of another woman who tried to stop him, officials said in November.

The witness tried to alert the Church Avenue station clerk that a violent man was escaping on the southbound train, which was allowed to depart and continue on its route, elected officials said at a November press conference.



Washington was examined and released by emergency responders who did not notice she had been stabbed in the back and suffered a punctured lung, officials said. "The police, at the time, didn't even drive her home," said then-state Senator Jesse Hamilton. "She had to walk home not knowing she had a punctured lung."



She only realized she'd been stabbed when she woke up the next morning in bloody sheets, said officials.

Saveljevs was arraigned on a 23-count indictment in Brooklyn Criminal Court Tuesday and held on $250,000 bail, prosecutors said. "This was a frightening, unprovoked attack on a woman who was allegedly targeted because of her race," said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.