Five Teens Yanked a Yarmulke and a Hat off Two Jewish Boys in Crown Heights
CROWN HEIGHTS — Cops are looking for five teenage boys that yanked a yarmulke and a hat off two Jewish boys last week.
On Monday, November 11 at around 6 p.m., the group of five teenagers approached a 14-year-old boy as he was walking at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Albany Avenue. They allegedly smacked the boy on the head and knocked his yarmulke off.
The group then approached another 15-year-old boy who, what cops say, was wearing a fedora hat. They took off and threw the fedora on the ground and ran. According to the NYPD, both boys were dressed in traditional Jewish clothing. A video of the suspects is attached below.
“With hate crimes– and violent hate crimes– on the rise, it is vital that we continue to do everything we can to confront this plague of baseless bias head-on,” Council Member Chaim Deutsch said. “We must pursue a combination of education in our communities and schools, additional police resources, and aggressive prosecution in order to tackle this hate. Jewish New Yorkers are tired of living in fear, and we will not accept the status quo anymore.”
There were no reported injuries. The incident is currently labeled as aggravated harassment and is being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.
Cops describe the suspects as the following:
Suspect 1 — A teenager with a light complexion and thin build. He was last seen wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, a dark jacket, and a ski mask.
Suspect 2 — A black teenager with a dark complexion and thin build. He was last seen wearing a red hooded jacket and a backpack.
Suspect 3 — A black teenager with a thin build. He was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, jeans, white sneakers, and a backpack.
Suspect 4 — A black teenager with a thin build. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with a dark fur-lined hooded jacket.
Suspect 5 — A black teenager with a thin build. He was last seen wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and dark sneakers.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.