A man was taken into custody after he repeatedly drove his vehicle into the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in New York City on Wednesday night. This incident occurred while people were gathered inside the esteemed Hasidic Jewish site for prayer.
Fortunately, there were no injuries reported as the driver struck the building’s door and then reversed to hit it multiple times. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has indicated that while the investigation is still in its early stages, authorities are considering the possibility of classifying the event as a hate crime. The motivation behind the driver’s actions remains unclear.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani expressed deep concern over the incident, emphasizing the significance of the Chabad Lubavitch institution to the global Jewish community. He described the crash as “intentional,” underscoring the gravity of the situation.
Footage of the event, which has surfaced online, shows a vehicle with New Jersey plates maneuvering back and forth on an icy driveway before forcefully ramming into the building’s basement-level doors. The driver, clad in shorts, can be seen exiting the vehicle and claiming to bystanders that the car “slipped,” while mentioning to the police an attempt to park.
According to Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad Lubavitch, the crash resulted in damage to several doors within the complex.
Chabad Lubavitch spokesperson Motti Seligson said some of the doors were damaged in the crash.
The Chabad Lubavitch headquarters and synagogue in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood receives thousands of visitors annually. Its Gothic Revival facade is very recognizable to adherents of the Chabad movement and has inspired dozens of replicas across the world.
Commonly referred to as 770, a nod to the Eastern Parkway address of the complex’s original building, the headquarters encompasses multiple adjacent structures.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the crash “disturbing and unacceptable.”
“This could have been much worse and I’m grateful that no one was hurt,” he said in a post on social platform X. “My office is working closely with the NYPD to ensure justice is done and the community is safe.”
Neither bombs nor any other weapons were found in the car that hit the building, according to Tisch. She said it was also too early in the investigation to comment on the driver’s mental state.
The incident happened on the 75th anniversary of the date that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson became the leader of the Lubavitch movement. Schneerson died in 1994 but remains a revered figure globally.
There has been a near constant police presence around 770 Eastern Parkway for years.
The site was at the epicenter of the Crown Heights riots in 1991, when Black residents of the neighborhood attacked Jews after a child was killed by a car traveling in Schneerson’s motorcade. In 2014, a disturbed man entered the synagogue and stabbed a rabbinical student, wounding him, before being shot dead by police.
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