No terror link seen in NYC Jewish center stabbing

Though police believe attack at Chabad was not racially motivated, local politician says it reminds him of Jerusalem synagogue massacre

NEW YORK — Police said Tuesday a stabbing attack at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in New York was not believed to be connected to terrorism.

But it shook the Jewish community, still reeling over an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue by two Palestinian cousins last month that left four worshipers and an officer dead.

“The entire Jewish community is impacted by these cruel and senseless attacks,” said New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose Brooklyn constituents are largely Orthodox Jews. “How can we help but be reminded of the recent, horrible tragedy … which left five innocent people dead?”

A man with a history of mental illness slipped into the headquarters of the major Jewish organization in Brooklyn Monday overnight and stabbed an Israeli student in the head as he was studying in the library.

Then, as the bloody victim was taken away, the attacker lunged at police and was shot and killed, authorities said. The 22-year-old student survived.

Calvin Peters, 49, could be seen on amateur video waving a knife in the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights at 1:40 a.m. after the attack on Levi Rosenblat. Rosenblat, wounded in the side of the head, was listed in stable condition.

The Yeshiva World News website reported that he was conscious and had spoken to a relative on the phone.

At least one witness said he heard Peters repeatedly saying, “Kill the Jews!” according to Rabbi Chaim Landa, a Chabad-Lubavitch spokesman.

Police were still interviewing witnesses but quoted Peters as saying instead, “I’m going to kill all of you.” And the case was not immediately classified as a possible bias crime.

Levi Rosenblat, an Israeli man who was stabbed in New York on Tuesday, December 9, 2014. His assailant was killed by police. (screen capture: Channel 2)

Peters had wandered into the Brooklyn building earlier Monday and was ushered out, then returned after midnight and asked: “Do you have any books in English?” before he was escorted out again, police said. The building is open 24 hours a day.

A jerky clip of the final confrontation posted online showed Peters in a waist-length jacket and hat with a knife in his right hand, surrounded by officers with drawn weapons and Jewish students wearing traditional plain Orthodox clothing.

http://youtu.be/zXrWvpHPi0o

Some of the students appeared to be trying to defuse the situation, urging Peters to calm down and asking officers not to shoot him.

Peters eventually put the knife down at an officer’s urging and stepped away, but quickly picked it up again as the officer approached him, apparently to arrest him.

Officers yelled at him repeatedly to drop the weapon as Peters moved around, and a single gunshot could be heard. The shooting itself took place outside camera range.

Police said Peters had lunged at the officer with the 4.5-inch blade.

Chaim Grossbaum, a 19-year-old who was studying at the center, said Peters had put his knife down, then picked it up again, “and starts walking toward them, and then the cops shoot him.”

Peters had a documented history of mental illness and had been arrested 19 times since 1982, most recently in 2006 for drugs, police said.

Attorney Jeffrey A. St. Clair, appearing at the Peters family’s front door in Valley Stream, on Long Island, described him as bipolar. St. Clair said the family had no warning of an outburst.

A Chabad spokesperson had said earlier the attack was most likely not terror-related.

“There is a 98% chance that this wasn’t a hate incident or a nationalistically motivated incident,” he told Army Radio.

The spokesperson said that many “borderline homeless” people visited the Jewish center late at night, hoping to enter to warm up. He said that there was most likely “an unpleasant exchange” between attacker and victim, after which “the stabber took out a kitchen knife and screamed at the Jewish youth that he would kill him.”

Rosenblat is a resident of Beitar Illit, according to Yeshiva World News.

Chabad-Lubavitch is a large, worldwide Hasidic movement that runs schools, synagogues and other institutions and reaches out to nonobservant Jews to encourage them to embrace their heritage and religious traditions. It is active on college campuses and in cities around the globe.

In 2008, Pakistani gunmen attacked a Chabad center in Mumbai, India, as part of a rampage through the financial capital that left 166 people dead, six of them at the Jewish site. Among the dead were a rabbi and his wife who moved there from Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, home to a large ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch community.