Remembering the Crown Heights Race Riots: 'It Was Warfare'

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The intersection of Utica Avenue and President Street was busy with cars and pedestrians on Friday. Shops were open. A daycare center was filled with small children. People washed their cars, speaking in a mixture of Carribean accents, while Orthodox men and women walked past.

Twenty-five years earlier, this was ground zero of the Crown Heights riots, the spot where Orthodox Jewish driver Yosef Lifsh accidentally hit and killed Gavin Cato, 7, and injured Angela Cato, also seven.

In the aftermath, an angry group of young men fatally stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum, an Jewish student from Australia. Three days of violence between Jewish and black residents followed. Numerous stores were destroyed. Hundreds of police made more than 120 arrests, while nearly 200 injuries were recorded.

Some on Friday made the events sound like they were from another world.

"Everybody gets along," said a Guyanese man who lived in Crown Heights from 1995 to 2007, and still owned a neighborhood store. "The Jews live right next to you. They keep to themselves."

"Everybody kind of stays in their zones," said Katiana Turenne, who said her grandmother had lived in the neighborhood for years before she herself moved here a few years ago. "There's no problem."

"I think it's a good neighborhood," said a young Jewish man who didn't want to give his name. "People relate to each other, and they get along."

Another Orthodox man who also asked for anonymity — perhaps suggesting the sensitivity of his comments — said "city government didn't act responsibility," during the riot, meaning that police didn't step in quickly enough.

He also said the neighborhood was peaceful, but attributed it to the work of market forces that continued to drive up rents and home prices, changing the makeup of the area as a result.

"In general, there's less people who want to make trouble," he explained.

Utica Avenue and President Street on Friday

At the Ctown Supermarket across the street from where Gavin Cato was killed, witnesses to the night's events came forward freely.

Owner Ahmed Mohsen, 53, a Palestinian immigrant and a Muslim, said he was working the night of the crash, as was Nathaniel Winston, 80. Both said they ran to the crash scene to try to lift Lifsh's car, which had pinned the children under it.

"These things don't make sense to me," Winston said of the ensuing violence. "Rioting and fighting and fussing. Everybody should get along."

"This is America," Mohsen said, speaking against violence and disunity. "You're supposed to blend into the society."

Mohsen said he had been in the community since 1981, and was already well known in the neighborhood by the time of the riots. At one point during the discord, a man threatened him with a knife, he said, but a local Jamaican immigrant protected him, saying, "Not this store and not this guy."

But another Ctown employee, Jarell Wayne, 38, had a different perspective.

The neighborhood's anger was triggered, he said, when the first ambulance to arrive at the crash scene — it was from an Orthodox EMS service — took away the driver, Lifsch, instead of Cato, the child.

Later, different explanations for that decision were presented (for example, that the Orthodox ambulance wasn't equipped to handle the boy's injuries), but Wayne said it enraged people at the time.

"The next couple of nights — it was warfare," he said. "The feeling? Just depressed to see everybody fighting like that."

Winston said he thought a similar outburst could never happen today, but Wayne disagreed.

"It's still tension up to this day," he said. Wayne said he had grown up playing with Orthodox children, but now, different groups kept to themselves.

"Everything changed after it happened," he said. Could the riot repeat itself? "Yeah, it could. I think it would be worse, too."

A Jewish man shopping in the store with his young son overheard Wayne's remarks, and clearly disagreed.

"I think it's beautiful, it's great," he said later, describing the community. "I have all types of neighbors," adding that the staff of his business is diverse as well.

"They're great people," he said of the African-Americans he works and lives with. "No problems at all."

Pictured at top, from left: Ahmed Mohsen, Nathanial Winston and Jarell Winston, standing by the intersection of Utica Avenue and President Street. Photos by John V. Santore