Ossining Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Murder as a Hate Crime
An Ossining man could face up to 25 years in jail after pleading guilty last week to stabbing a Black female teenager multiple times in an apartment complex last year.
According to Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah, Robert McCallion, 36, used racial slurs on March 13, 2020 as he stabbed the 17-year-old victim, who was visiting family in the apartments on North Highland Avenue. McCallion, who lived there, didn’t know the victim.
Ossining Police arrested McCallion after he was found in the parking lot of the apartment complex with blood on his hands and clothes. The knife McCallion used to stab the victim was also found at the scene. Police located the victim, who was bleeding profusely with stab wounds to the face and back, inside the apartment building with her family, and she was taken to the hospital where she underwent surgery.
During a search of McCallion’s apartment, where he lived with his father, police recovered multiple weapons, including two loaded assault weapons in his bedroom. The FBI assisted the Ossining Police Department with the investigation.
“This was a brutal, despicable and cowardly attack by Robert McCallion on an innocent young woman because of the color of her skin,” Rocah said. “Hate crimes such as this not only traumatize the victim, but the community as well, and will be prosecuted aggressively by this office.”
Following his arrest on the Ossining incident, on March 15, 2020, McCallion attacked a medical professional at Westchester County Jail in Valhalla, where he was being held.
McCallion pled guilty on September 9 to Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, Attempted Murder in the Second Degree as a Hate Crime, Two Counts of Assault in the First Degree, Two Counts of Assault in the First Degree as a Hate Crime, Two Counts of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, Four Counts of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree, and Two Counts of Assault in the Second Degree, all felonies.
McCallion faces a sentence range from a minimum of eight years to a maximum of 25 years in state prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on November 16.
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/
