By COLlive reporter
On the 30th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots against Jews, one local resident is recalling the harrowing moment his life was in danger. His story is one of the little-told stories of the victims.
Dr. Harvey Lang, a chiropractor and a Chabad chossid, was driving back to his home in Crown Heights from a visit to the summer vacation town of Tannersville in Upstate New York.
He had no idea what has been happening in the neighborhood following the car accident that killed 7-year-old Gavin Cato and injured his 7-year-old cousin, Angela. The driver was Jewish and the entire Jewish community was blamed.
When Dr. Tzvi Lang got to Crown Street the next day, not far from the 71st Precinct of the New York Police Department, “all of a sudden, a mob came. A mob of 50 maybe 100 people,” he told Mary Murphy of PIX11.
“There were rocks, there were bricks,” he recalled, “smashed up my car, my face.”
He said his passenger yelled for him to step on the gas.
“He said, ‘Step on it! Do something!’” Lang remembered. “So I did, and the crowd dispersed. I actually drove on the sidewalk to 770 Eastern Parkway.”
“I was totally traumatized for months,” Lang said this week outside his house, “and I was afraid to drive.”
Many in the community blamed activists like Al Sharpton and Sonny Carson for bringing outsiders to Crown Heights to protest, which led to the damage of businesses and nearly 200 residents and police officers hurt, according to PIX11.
Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Lubavitcher from Australia in Crown Heights at the time, was stabbed to death and his yartzeit was marked this week.
VIDEO:
A miracle Dr.. Lang survived.. Boruch Hashem.
The “activists” encouraged people to riot, not protest. ” No justice, no peace” was their war cry. And it wasn’t just outsiders – it was Blacks from Crown Heights too.