WATERVLIET — City police say they now believe a teenager accused of hate crimes and detained over the weekend should be charged as an adult because documents identifying him as a juvenile were “possibly fraudulent.”
Watervliet police initially arrested the teen, an Afghan national, on Sunday evening after he allegedly dragged a Pakistani neighbor from his home in what they describe as a “targeted, ethnicity-motivated attack.” The attack, police say, stemmed from an apparent argument the pair had the previous day about current hostilities between the two countries.
He was arrested a short time later and charged with assault and burglary as hate crimes because of statements police said he made about the victim’s nationality and ethnicity during the alleged attack. Bail was set at $10,000, and the teen was sent to the Albany County jail…