Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah announced that Ossining resident Robert McCallion pled guilty to 14 felony charges, including attempted murder as a hate crime, after he stabbed a Black teenager multiple times in 2020 and subsequently attacked a medical professional at Westchester County Jail.
McCallion, 36, pled guilty on September 9, 2021, 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.
On March 13, 2020, McCallion used racial slurs as he stabbed a 17-year-old Black woman multiple times at a North Highland Avenue apartment complex in Ossining where he lived. The victim, who was at the apartment building visiting family, was a stranger to the defendant.
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.
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.
“This was a brutal, despicable and cowardly attack by Robert McCallion on an innocent young woman because of the color of her skin,” DA 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.”
The case is before Judge Barry Warhit in Westchester County Court and is being prosecuted by Homicide Bureau Chief Lana Hochheiser and Cold Case Bureau Chief Laura Murphy. McCallion is scheduled to be sentenced on November 16, 2021.
