Ultra-Orthodox Wedding Grandpa Beaten After Brooklyn Reception — Was It ‘Knockout’?
A haredi Orthodox man from London visiting New York for his grandson’s wedding was attacked.
The 65-year-old man had his face smashed into the sidewalk early Tuesday morning in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park as he left the wedding reception, the New York Daily News reported. His lip was split and a tooth was chipped; nothing was stolen, according to CBS New York. He was treated at a local hospital.
New York police and a Brooklyn councilman differ over whether it was a knockout game assault in which the assailant tries to knock out an individual with one punch. A spate of such attacks in New York in recent months appeared to target identifiably Jewish people. Other incidents have occurred in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., as well as other U.S. states, according to reports.
“Simply put, there is no place for this type of heinous behavior in our city, as nobody should be afraid to walk the streets of their community at any time of day or night,” New York City Councilman David Greenfield, who represents Brooklyn, said in a statement. Greenfield believes it was a knockout attack.
New York police are not calling it a knockout attack because the victim was not punched as they were in previous attacks, according to the Daily News.
A Long Island, N.Y., man was arrested in mid-December in connection with four knockout attacks that date back as far as April. A Brooklyn man was arrested in January for several attacks that took place in November and December.
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