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Council candidate condemns vicious Woodside attack

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The attack took place Sunday night as the family was returning to their apartment on 59th Street and was reported prominently Tuesday in both the Daily News and New York Post.
The Post reported that the father in the family was a Sikh cab driver who wears a turban.
The cabby, his wife and cousin, all U.S. citizens, “were pummeled by the trio of thugs,” as the couple’s two frightened children aged 8 and 10, looked on, the Post report stated.
Citing law enforcement sources, the paper reported that the three men called the cab driver “bin Laden,” and threatened to kill him if he and his family did not leave the country.
A passing pizza deliveryman, who described the attackers to reporters as “three Irish fellows,” scared off the attackers.
The deliveryman said the three were “pretty intoxicated.” He said they ran off when he started screaming at them.
Hurley, a Cork native who is standing on the Republican and Conservative line for the City Council 26th district election in November, described the incident as “disgraceful.”
“Such an attack, if perpetrated by Irish people, or anybody else for that matter, is totally inexcusable. There is no excuse for that kind of conduct,” Hurley said.
Hurley, an occasional opinion columnist for the Echo, said that he had lately been concerned about people hanging out on streets outside bars in the 26th district which includes Woodside.
He said that the smoking ban in bars had resulted in groups of people who had been drinking being outside the bars and not inside them and this, he believed, was contributing to rowdy street behavior by some individuals.
The pizza deliveryman who came to the family’s rescue, Gregory Hodge, concurred. He told the Post that the attack was not an isolated incident.
“You see this a lot in this neighborhood. You get a few drunk guys and they get beer muscles,” he said.

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