Man Yells, “You Need To Die”

By COLlive reporter

A teenage Jewish girl walking to school in Crown Heights was verbally attacked Wednesday morning by a non-Jewish man who shouted angry slurs in her direction.

The 14 year old girl was heading to school at Bais Rivkah High School, when a black man began shouting at her that “you need to die” and other verbal attacks, her father told COLlive.

The man followed her from New York Avenue and Carroll street as she walked to the school building on Crown Street near Nostrand Avenue.

The shaken girl walked into school and reported the incident to school staff, who reported the incident to police at the 71st precinct.

The police came quickly and looked though surveillance video at the school to see if they could identify the attacker, and took a police report, her family said.

This attack comes a day after another incident in Crown Heights in which a Jewish man was verbally attacked by a group of black teens who yelled out “all Jews should die” and threatened to stab him.

It was the same line that the shooter reportedly said when he opened fire this past Shabbos at Jewish people praying at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in what was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history.

“From the description of the victim and what we have seen in the footage, the man appeared to be suffering from a mental condition,” Detective Vinnie Martinos of the 71st Precinct told COLlive. “This appears to be the case in many of the recent incidents in the neighborhood,” he said, noting that the police will usually send these individuals for medical treatment in a nearby hospital.

The girl’s parents are concerned for their daughter’s safety, as well as all the students in the school.

“There are hundreds of girls walking there every day,” he told COLlive. “For everyone’s safety, they can really use more police presence in front of the school,” he said.