Scandal in New York City. The man who attacked two teenage tourists from Paraguay in Grand Central Station on Christmas morning was released on parole just weeks ago by a New York judge who ignored the advice of the Prosecutor’s Office that asked for the attacker to be institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital.

According to a report from the New York Post, the accused, Steven Hutcherson, 36, had problems with the law throughout the year. Less than two weeks before the attack against the young Paraguayan women, he had been released on parole thanks to complacency by Judge Matthew Grieco, who held the hearing against Hutcherson for randomly threatening a stranger on a Bronx street.

“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 told NYP.

Weeks before the Christmas morning stabbings, Hutcherson had yelled at an unknown man named Yussif Abdullahi, “Why are you working for white people? I’m going to kill this man.”

A scream similar to the one he made on December 25 before stabbing the 14 and 16-year-old Paraguayan girls and after fighting with employees of the Tartinery chain, he said: “I want all the white people dead.”

Judge Grieco’s decision is especially controversial because Hutcherson, over the last two decades, was arrested at least 17 times and has on his record half a dozen complaints of domestic violence from a Manhattan woman with whom he dated sporadically between 2020 and 2021.

According to the NYP report, this year, Hutcherson was imprisoned repeatedly.

For example, he spent time in prison after being arrested in July for resisting arrest when he aggressively entered a Bronx police station.

The man, described as “mentally disturbed” by police sources, refused to leave the police station, leading to his arrest by the authorities, who found a dagger and a switchblade during the search.

On that occasion, Hutcherson pleaded guilty to misdemeanor weapons possession and received a 15-day jail sentence.

The perpetrator of the Grand Central stabbing in New York also spent a week behind bars in October when he was arrested after smashing a display case at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, causing $81,000 in damage.

Finally, in the case of the threat against Abdullahi, police did not recover any weapons belonging to Hutcherson, but they did find a red-handled knife in his pocket when he was detained. The man then pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail. However, despite prosecutors’ requests, he was released on parole, and less than two weeks later, he almost murdered two Paraguayan girls who were having breakfast with their parents on Christmas morning.