Aug. 26: It was the first fare of the cab driver’s shift. A young man hailed him at the corner of Second Avenue and East 24th Street, wanting to go to 42nd and Second. It was 6 pm on Tuesday; the traffic was dense. Once the fare, Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student who had been recently trailing Marines in Afghanistan, settled in the back, he started asking friendly enough questions: Where was the driver from? Was he Muslim? The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, 44, said he was from Bangladesh, and yes he was Muslim.
Enright said, “Salaam aleikum,” the Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you.” “How’s your Ramzan going?” Enright asked, Sharif said. He told him it was going fine. Then, he said, Enright began making fun of the rituals of Ramzan, and Sharif sensed this cab ride might not be like any other.
“So I stopped talking to him,” Sharif said. “He stopped talking, too.” As the cab inched up Third Avenue and reached 39th Street, Sharif said in a phone interview, Enright suddenly began cursing at him and shouting “This is the checkpoint” and “I have to bring you down.” He said he told him he had to bring the king of Saudi Arabia to the checkpoint. “He was talking like he was a soldier,” Sharif said. He withdrew a Leatherman knife, Sharif said, and, reaching through the opening in the plastic divider, slashed Sharif’s throat. When Sharif turned, he said, Enright stabbed him in his face, on his arm and on his thumbs.
Sharif said he told him: “I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard, I have a family.” He said Enright bolted out of the slowly moving cab. Sharif then found a police officer who apprehended Enright. The officer told him, Sharif said, that Enright said he had tried to rob him. Sharif received more than two dozen stitches at Bellevue Hospital Centre and was released. Enright was given a psychiatric evaluation there. The Manhattan district attorney charged Enright with second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon.
He was arraigned on Wednesday in Manhattan criminal court, appearing in cargo shorts and a polo shirt, and ordered held without bail. If convicted of the top charge, he would face up to 25 years in prison. “He’s terrified,” said Enright’s lawyer, Jason A. Martin.