Orthodox Jewish men walk past a ‘Crown Heights Shmira Patrol’ security vehicles in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights on February 27, 2019 in New York. Image by ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images
A Jewish man in his 60s was attacked with a brick in a city park in Brooklyn on Tuesday, Yeshiva World News reported.
The man was reportedly doing an exercise walk in Rochester Park in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights when he was attacked by a man holding a giant brick. He was reportedly bloodied but managed to fight back with the assistance of passers-by, causing the alleged assailant to flee.
A New York Police Department source told Yeshiva World News that there had been no words exchanged between the man and his alleged attacker prior to the incident. The source added that they had footage of the incident and the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force was investigating.
New York City has seen a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in the past year, especially assaults on visibly Jewish men in Brooklyn. The NYPD reported in June that the number of hate crimes in the city during the first six months of 2019 was more than double the number the previous year – and that more than half of the 2019 incidents were anti-Semitic in nature.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink