August 21, 1991
A Boy's Death Ignites Clashes in Crown Heights
By JOHN KIFNER
Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday as the two communities, separately and bitterly, each mourned a member killed, one in a traffic accident on Monday night and the other stabbed in the racial melee that followed.
Bottles, rocks and ethnic slurs were hurled as hundreds of police officers struggled to separate the screaming, taunting groups near the headquarters of the Lubavitcher sect, at 770 Eastern Parkway.
As darkness fell, about 500 blacks, mostly young teen-agers, gathered at the intersection of President Street and Utica Avenue, where the accident had occurred and where the dead child had lived. They, set afire at least three vehicles, one a police car, hurled rocks at houses owned by Jews and looted a sneaker store. Five reporters and photographers were beaten, two by police officers and three by black protesters.
Collision and a Clash
The Dinkins administration voiced fears that the turmoil in a neighborhood where there has long been friction between blacks and the tightly-knit, Orthodox Lubavitcher community could worsen the city's already tense racial atmosphere.
The trouble began on Monday night when a car driven by a Hasidic man jumped a sidewalk and killed a 7-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato, and critically injured his cousin of the same age, Angela Cato. Word of the crash spread throughout the central Brooklyn neighborhood and brought out hundreds of blacks, mostly teen-agers, who surrounded the scene, some throwing bottles and jeering the police. As some angry youths roamed the neighborhood, a Jewish student from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, was stabbed. He died in a hospital yesterday morning, and two teen-agers were arrested in the killing. 'Our Streets!'
The confrontations were fueled by rumors that the Hasidim involved in the car accident were given medical attention before the black children.
Last evening, the crowd of mostly young blacks at Utica Avenue and President Street were chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!"
There were scattered clashes in the surrounding streets, with blacks and Hasidim throwing bottles and rocks at each other, and both sides tussling with the police. At the corner of Utica and President, black protesters surrounded an empty police car, stripped it and flipped it over.
Rocks Thrown at Homes
Young black men threw rocks at three homes along a block of President Street that black neighbors said belonged to Jews.
Gregory Seabrook, who lives next door to one of the houses, said the trouble had long been brewing, but "this is the worst I've seen."
"People are feeling that there is just no justice," he said. "They look to the St. John's rape case and they look to this."
A woman who answered the phone at one of the houses on President Street said her family was afraid to leave.
"They broke my windows and they are yelling," said the woman, who declined to be identified. "We are staying home and we don't go out. We hope it will be finished soon."
"The Jewish people are afraid to walk on the streets," added the woman, who said she had called the police to no avail. "Accidents happen and we are very sorry for the boy who died, but the whole community is not at fault."
In another of the houses, a man who answered the phone said: "We haven't gone out since last night."
"All you hear is shouting and screaming, thudding and glass breaking," the man said. "You hear the sirens, the police. It's pandemonium. It's very scary. Oh, I just heard some more glass breaking. What's going on? When's it going to end?"
Sneaker Store Looted
By around 9:30 P.M., many of the black youths had turned to looting. With at least 100 people looking on, a group of young men with pipes and sticks pried open the security gate of the Sneaker King on Utica Avenue at Union Street. A cheer rose as they broke through the gates, entered the store and ran off with armfuls of sneakers and jogging suits.
A few blocks north, near Eastern Parkway, a fire broke out at about the same time at the Utica Gold Exchange jewelry store. An ornate security gate had been pried open and looters began taking goods away. Dense smoke poured first from the store, then from the two stories above it.
Other stores along Utica were being hit and there were several fires. At one point a van in front of the victim's family's apartment house was torched and set the car next to it on fire. The police tried to hold a static position in the middle of Utica, but as they would march toward the crowd they would be met with flying bottles and bricks, driving them back in formation.
The police reported at least 14 arrests by 10 P.M. and said at least a dozen police had been injured by flying rocks or bottles. One officer was seen bleeding profusely after being struck in the face with a bottle.
By 12:30 A.M. today, the neighborhood was mostly quiet except for some "roving bands of looters," said Deputy Inspector Edward F. Loesch.
Earlier yesterday, uniformed city policemen in riot gear were seen beating at least two news photographers as they attempted to photograph the clashes. One was identified as Viorel Florescu of New York Newsday; the second was Chris Griffith of the Amsterdam News, who was charged with assault. He was treated for minor injuries at Caledonian Hospital.
A black crowd chased two television journalists from WABC-TV down Utica Avenue, cornering them outside a store, where the crowd kicked and punched them.
Edward Keating, a photographer for The New York Times, was attacked by a crowd of youths and beaten. He was being treated at Kings County Hospital last night.
Mayor David N. Dinkins went to Crown Heights on Monday night and stayed several hours. His senior advisers said the violence had deeply upset him.
They viewed the case as especially troubling and dangerous in a neighborhood with a long history of black-Jewish feuding because it was the first involving deaths. If, as it appeared, the stabbing turned out to be retaliation for the car accident, officials worried that it could start a tit-for-tat cycle that would be difficult to break.
"We are in a tense situation," Mayor Dinkins told reporters at City Hall yesterday. "It's painful."
At Public School 167 on Eastern Parkway yesterday, Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch spent two and a half hours listening to complaints from about 60 residents of the community, most of them black but also including about a half dozen Hasidic Jews.
Much of the discussion was devoted to complaints from the blacks that the Hasidic community received preferential treatment from the police in the 71st Precinct. The complaints mirrored similar criticism in the Williamsburg section, where Hispanic residents have charged that the police have favored the Satmar Hasidic sect at the expense of Hispanic residents.
Returning From Cemetery
Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown, acknowledging that he was looking into complaints that Hasidic Jews were afforded preferential treatment in the two precincts, said that "I think that what you have here is years and years of tension in the area and there is still that mistrust that exists there."
Those tensions spilled over Monday night as the Lubavitcher Grand Rebbe Menachem Schneerson was returning from his regular weekly visit to the grave of his wife at Montefiore Cemetery, accompanied by the unmarked police car normally sent along with him as both a courtesy and a security measure.
Also accompanying the Rebbe was a dark blue station wagon driven by one of the Rebbe's followers, Yoseph Lisef, 22 years old. In the car, too, were twin brothers, Yakov and Levi Spielman, who were training Mr. Lisef in escort duty.
Children Pinned Against Grate
The station wagon fell behind the convoy and, according to witnesses, ran a red light at the corner of President Street and Utica Avenue and struck another car, sending it skidding onto the sidewalk about 8:20 P.M.
Playing there near their apartment at 1677 President Street were Gavin and Angela Cato. The station wagon plowed into them, pinning them against a steel grate, killing Gavin Cato, the police said. Angela Cato was taken to Kings County Hospital, where she was listed in serious condition.
Then, in what proved to be a critical turn, both a city Emergency Medical Service ambulance and a private ambulance operated by the Hasidim arrived on the scene as an angry crowd of blacks gathered from the busy intersection and nearby West Indian restaurants and pizza stands.
The police, the Hasidim and black witnesses all said that youths in the crowd attacked the driver of the station wagon and the crew of the Hasidic ambulance.
Police Commissioner Brown, reconstructing the incident for reporters yesterday, said that the police had told the Hasidic ambulance to get out "in the interests of preserving the peace there."
Passions in the crowd, now swollen by several hundred youths leaving a nearby B. B. King concert, were further inflamed when they watched a police truck pull the wrecked station wagon away, leaving a pool of blood, said a black witness, Vaughn Stevens.
Floral Wreath and Bear
The bloodstain was marked yesterday by a floral wreath decorated with a tiny blue teddy bear with a sign saying "hug me." A hand-lettered sign above it called for the "white Jew" involved in the accident to be brought to justice.
After the accident on Monday night, hundreds of black youths began running through the streets, smashing windows, turning over at least one car, shouting "Jew! Jew!"
Racing along President Street, a group of black youths surrounded Mr. Rosenbaum, a visiting rabbinical students, and stabbed him at about 11:25 P.M., the police said. He died about an hour and a half later at Kings County Hospital. Commissioner Brown told reporters the death appeared to be in retaliation for the rumors on the street that the Hasidic ambulance had not tended the injured black children.
Arrested for the stabbing of Mr. Rosenbaum, but not yet charged this evening, was Limerick Nelson, 16 years old, and a 15-year-old male who was not identified because of his age.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
