Jewish Man Attacked With Metal Bat in Staten Island

By Reuvain Borchardt

A Jewish man says he is lucky to be alive after an assailant calling him “dirty Jew” bashed him in the head with a metal bat.

The incident occurred Monday on Grandview Ave. between Netherland Ave. and Forest Ave. in the Mariners Harbor neighborhood of Staten Island, an area where the Department of Motor Vehicles gives road tests, the victim, a driving instructor for the Beep Beep Auto School, told Hamodia in an interview. Around 2:30 p.m., the victim, 25, who spoke on condition of anonymity, had just gotten out of his vehicle to allow the DMV road tester to get in and take the instructor’s student a road test, and he began walking down the street.

“I had just gotten out of the car, and maybe 10 seconds later, this guy approached me,” the victim said. “He pointed at my yarmulke and asked me, ‘How do you know you’re Jewish?’ and he stuck his hand in my face. I knocked his hand away, and then I started yelling, ‘Get out of here,’ and, ‘How dare you.’ He called me a ‘dirty Jew’ and then he started briefly backing off into the street. All of a sudden I saw he was holding a small metal bat. Before I know it, he starts smacking me with it.”

The assailant struck the victim in the abdominal area, knocking him to the ground.

“Then he started hitting me on the head. He just continued banging and banging and banging. It must have been five or ten times. I blacked out for a few seconds, and then I noticed people running toward me, and he fled the scene.”

The victim was taken by Hatzalah to Staten Island University North, where he underwent tests and received several stitches. He was discharged the same day.

The assailant has not been caught, and the case is being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force and Staten Island Shomrim.

A day after the attack, the victim said he still has pain in his stomach, head and hands, and his head still has some bleeding. But he feels fortunate to be alive.

“If no one was there, he probably would have killed me,” he says. “G-d saved me. It was a miracle.”

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rborchardt@hamodia.com