Miami Police: We Found Brooklyn Rabbi's Teen Killer

UPDATE, 6:30 p.m.: The Miami-Dade State Attorney announced at a Wednesday-afternoon press conference that investigators “believe this was a robbery... a crime of opportunity.” Eyewitness testimony and DNA evidence reportedly helped police and prosecutors pin the murder on 15-year-old Deandre Edwin Charles. “We want this vicious thug to be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows,” the rabbi’s daughter said at the presser. The suspect’s family, though, claims he’s not guilty. “He was home at the time. His whole family knows that,” his stepfather, Willis Archibald, told reporters. “They are pinning this on a young teenager that has a lot of issues but this is ridiculous. I am 100 percent sure that he is innocent.”

Original story:

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FL — Homicide detectives from the Miami-Dade Police Department believe they’ve found the young man responsible for Brooklyn Rabbi Joseph Raskin’s widely publicized murder last year.

Deandre Charles, 15, was arrested Wednesday “in connection with the murder of Rabbi Joseph Raskin,” Miami-Dade police confirmed to Patch.

Raskin — a Crown Heights resident, Orthodox Jew and 60-year-old father of six who was visiting Northeast Miami-Dade in the summer of last year — was on his way to morning synagogue on Aug. 9, 2014, when he was shot and killed, according to multiple news reports.

Police reportedly believed Raksin was the subject of a botched robbery.

There was speculation in the immediate aftermath of Raskin’s murder that it had been motivated by anti-Semitism. However, the Anti-Defamation League warned that the Jewish community “must be careful not to assume this was a hate-motivated crime unless or until such information is discovered and released by law enforcement.”

The ADL said in a statement: “While the motivation for this crime is still being investigated, nothing can justify the killing of an innocent man walking to his place of worship to pray on his holy day.”

Whatever the motive behind Raskin’s murder, his death was a hard hit for the Orthodox Jewish communities in both Miami-Dade and Brooklyn.

Hundreds of mourners reportedly gathered at his funeral in Crown Heights on Aug. 11.

Rabbi Shea Hecht, a childhood friend of Raskin’s, told the Jewish Voice at the funeral: “He was a kind man, an honest man. If you look at the way he was taken away and the way he lived his life, it makes no sense. It cannot be understood.”

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that members of Miami-Dade’s Jewish community felt a weight lifted off their shoulders after Charles’ arrest.

Yona Lunger, a community activist and member of the Shmira Patrol, a neighborhood watch group, told the Herald: “Everyone was talking about it in shul [temple] this morning. It couldn’t be better timing then to happen during Hanukkah when each day was a miracle.”

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office will be releasing more information on the investigation Wednesday afternoon. We’ll update with the latest when it comes through.