Sheepshead Bay/Manhattan Beach Democrat Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz has asked Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson to charge the suspect arrested in the attack on Leonard Petlakh, executive director of the Kings Bay Y, with a bias crime, Yeshiva World reports.
Petlakh had just left the Nets-Maccabi Tel Aviv exhibition game with his children on Oct. 7 when he was attacked and left with a broken nose and severe lacerations. Police charged Shawn Schraeder with third degree assault in the incident.
Cymbrowitz sent a letter to Thompson saying he found that the arrest sheet made no mention of bias in the charges “extremely disturbing” and asked that district attorney to direct the new head of his hate crimes unit, Marc Fliedner, to investigate.
“As one of our city’s most prominent Jewish leaders, Mr. Petlakh wants the perpetrator who attacked him to be charged not just for the assault but for the anti-Semitic hatred that both precipitated and accompanied it. Mr. Schraeder did not attend the game as a spectator but as an instigator turned thug. He deserves the harshest penalty the law allows for this category of crime,” Cymbrowitz wrote.
However, the Daily News reported the incident was actually sparked by an argument in the stands during the game between Israeli supporters and Palestinian supporters and then fighting broke out between the two groups of fans after the game.
