FirstAlerts

Bronx Man Charged With Federal Hate Crimes For Manhattan Synagogue Attack

Larry Montes, 46, faces federal hate crime charges following an alleged attack during a Shabbat service in Manhattan.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 18, 2026, 7:59 p.m. ET
Federal authorities with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced on August 18, 2026, that Larry Montes, 46, of the Bronx, New York, has been with federal hate crimes. The matter is open and developing. According to official records, Montes was with two counts of committing hate crimes and one count of destruction of religious property resulting in bodily injury. The charges stem from an August 14, 2026, incident during a Shabbat service attended by approximately 375 people at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, where Montes allegedly disrupted services, damaged ceremonial candlesticks, struck a worshipper, and assaulted a security guard. Montes is currently in state custody awaiting transfer to Manhattan federal court. The case is at the charging stage, and the charges contained in the complaint are allegations. Montes is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The statutory maximum sentences are 10 years in prison for each hate crime count and 20 years in prison for the property damage count.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 119 Aug 2026, 00:10

    First published.

  2. Version 118 Aug 2026, 23:59current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble β€” all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources β€” accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements β€” and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld β€” a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them β€” and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.