Hasidic community patrol catches anti-Semitic attackers

A Hasidic community patrol in New York stopped the perpetrators of an anti-Semitic attack on one of their members Wednesday.

The victim was targeted by three people in a car, who shot him in the abdomen with a paintball gun and shouted anti-Semitic epithets. The incident took place late Wednesday night in the heavily Jewish Monsey neighborhood of Kaser in Ramapo, New York, Lohud.com reported.

The victim was leaning against a car and speaking with another man when a car with North Carolina plates drove up to them. One of the male passengers, 23-year-old Shashi Ramsaroop, pointed a black paintball rifle at the victim and fired around six shots, hitting him at least twice, according to Ramapo police sergeant Sal Matos. The victim and a witness claimed the assailants yelled, “[expletive] Jew.”

“It was a powerful paint gun with 3/4-inch diameter balls,” he said.

Unfortunately for the three perpetrators, the Chaverim neighborhood watch group was holding a meeting nearby. They followed the car and managed to trap the three attackers until police arrived.

The victim was taken to Nyack Hospital and treated for bruises to his abdomen and then released.

The three suspects, charged with second-degree assault as a hate crime, were arraigned Thursday in Ramapo Justice Court. They also face second-degree aggravated harassment, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and third-degree criminal tampering charges.

Kaser, a densely packed village within the heavily Hasidic rural hamlet of Monsey, was founded by Vizhnitz Hasidim in 1990. Monsey has been the site of tension between ultra-Orthodox residents and liberal Jewish and non-Jewish residents over taxes, Hasidic control of the public school board, and housing.

There have been rocks thrown at school buses in the town, and an incident in which dozens of Chaverim members surrounded a family whose daughter threw a water balloon at a Hasidic family’s car, Lohud reported.

Relations between the Hasidic population and their African-American and immigrant neighbors have also been fraught. “I think this is only the beginning,” community activist Cassandra Edwards told Lohud. “There’s such a culture of ‘us versus them’ in this county – particularly in Ramapo and Spring Valley.”

“What’s being done to our children is a hate crime too,” she said . “How come no one is talking about that?”

“When there’s a crime against a person of color they’re not so fast to call it a hate crime,” claimed Peggy Hatton, another local activist. “There is an uneven standard.”