Accused Monsey attacker Grafton Thomas was kicked out of Marine Corps boot camp for lying to his recruiters — and apparently never got enough training to effectively wield a machete.
“Thomas started boot camp in November 2002 and was separated a month later for fraudulent enlistment,” a Marine Corps spokesman said in an email Tuesday.
The spokesman declined to elaborate on Grafton’s deceit, citing “privacy concerns,” but said records show that he started his service on Nov. 20, 2002, and was thrown out on Christmas Eve of that year.
Thomas’ short stay at the Marines’ boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, didn’t keep him from touting it on a hand-written résumé — revealed exclusively by The Post on Monday — that claims it taught him “mental discipline,” “survival skills,” “teamwork” and “how to function under pressure.”
Meanwhile, Thomas might have caused far more alleged damage had he known how to use a machete against people, according to a rabbi who spoke with two of the five victims wounded in Saturday’s Hanukkah party attack.
“He swung up and down, left and right. He swung wildly, and that might have something to do with why more people weren’t hurt,” Rabbi Shmuel Gancz of Chabad of Suffern told The Post.
Gancz said Shloime Rottenberg, whose father, Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, hosted Saturday’s event, and Naftali Frank both “got away with stitches,” although another victim, Joseph Neumann, 70, suffered a critical skull fracture.