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Steve Lipman - Staff Writer
The killing of a 47-year-old chasidic man on the streets of Crown Heights early Tuesday morning does not appear to be an anti-Semitic attack but possibly a random shooting between members of rival gangs, according to early indications.
Ephraim Klein was to travel to Israel Sunday for the wedding of one of his sons.
“The police are pursuing all avenues of investigation,” said David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “There is no evidence that it is a hate crime, nor is there evidence that it is not.”
Pollock said detectives from Brooklyn South, the 71st Precinct and the New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force are conducting the investigation. The hate crime detectives are involved, he said, “in case any evidence arises that it is a hate crime.”
According to police reports Klein, said to be something of a night owl, was moving his SUV at 1:30 a.m. on Carroll Street to comply with alternate side of the street parking regulations when he was shot in the arm and chest. He lost control of his vehicle, which slammed into several parked cars along the block before coming to a stop.
His car caught fire and three African-American residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood pulled him out and “attempted to save his life,” Pollock said.
Klein was pronounced dead later that morning at nearby Kings County Hospital.
Leaders of various religious and ethnic groups that live in Crown Heights, the base for Chabad Lubavitch, held a press conference Tuesday at the Jewish Children’s Museum.
“The ongoing theme was the crime of gun violence” that strikes at the entire community, Pollock said. “The other theme was that Crown Heights pulls together quite readily now — it’s a neighborhood working togerher, black and white.”
“We are asking the community to stand together and give strength to the family, but at the same time let’s try to be calm until the police come back with their findings,” said Rabbi Shea Hecht, a leader of the Lubavitch community.
The residents were in an “uproar” following the shooting, said Chanina Sperlin, executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, but there were no reports of violence in the neighborhood, the scene of anti-Jewish riots in 1991.
Police Department representatives met with leaders of the Jewish Community Council immediately after the killing.
Diane Steinman, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s New York Chapter, called Klein’s death a “senseless and brutal killing.”
“I want to express our admiration for the Jewish and African-American communities of Crown Heights as they stand together at this time of tragedy and raise their voices against violence,” she said.
The Crown Heights Jewish Community Council offered a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of Klein’s killers.
Klein’s funeral was conducted Tuesday in Crown Heights in front of 770 Eastern Parkway, world headquarters of the Lubavitch movement. Along with his son in Israel, he has two daughters who live in New York.
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