A Brooklyn man is said to have violently pushed a wheelchair building on the sidewalk during a shocking caught-on-video fight that could burn some fear racial tensions in Crown Heights.
On March 29, the incident broke from Lincoln Place between Levi Kabakov and Troy McLeod, who ran without belts with his two Muiled German Shepherds.
McLeod, 50, told news12 That Kabakov, 30, encouraged him to cross with his dogs to the other side of the street.
Kabakov, who is an orthodox Jew, is said to run into the street and told McLeod, who is black, he did not want the German shepherds to scare his small children, McLeod explained to News12.
But before he could, Kabakov McLeod would have struck twice with a wooden couch from his garden before pushing him out of his wheelchair and in a parked car, the video – Posted on Reddit – shows.
The wooden sofa is visible in the 67 seconds long clip. Kabakov and Mcleod talk about each other as a second orthodox man tries to calm the furious father. The woman who filmed the video repeatedly called for someone to call 911 and shouted to Kabakov to stop touching McLeod.
The Video Caught Kabakov who pushes McLeod hardAnd overthrow his chair. McLeod’s head hits the side of the parked vehicle.
“How can you do that with a man in a wheelchair? The children were fine,” said the woman who recorded, while other neighbors came to the defense of McLeod and shout, “How do you dare?” In Kabakov.
The police said that Kabakov then threw a wooden block to McLeod while he was still on the floor.
“I was scared, I tried to get up again, I was in shock and thank goodness was someone there,” McLeod told the station. “It felt like a vengeful atmosphere for me … It wasn’t necessary.”
McLeod told news12 that his dogs were muzzled the entire walk and noted that they were so well trained, they were in place even when he was attacked.
McLeod said agents that he sustained injuries on his hands, shoulders and trunk.
Kabakov was arrested the next day and accused of two counts each of the attack, criminal possession of a weapon, aggravated threat and attempt at abuse.
He was pre -lived that same day and released without bail pending a judicial appearance of July 17.
Kabakov did not respond to calls to ask for comments. McLeod could not be achieved for comment.
Crown Heights was the setting for one of the ugliest periods of the city in August 1991 after a motorcade with Rebbe Menachem Mendel Scherson, the leader of the Jewish religious movement of Chabad, unintentionally beaten and killed 7-year-old Gavin Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants.
The boy’s death led to a crowd of black teenagers who ‘get a Jew’ to surround and kill the 29-year-old Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jewish graduate from Australia. Three days of riots damaged dozens of Jewish companies and houses.
District leader Anthony Beckford condemned the attack on McLeod and called on members of the community “not to allow their anger about this situation in hatred or resentment.”
He said that he encourages the office of the public prosecutor Eric Gonzalez “to prosecute this case in general, to make a clear example that behavior like this is not tolerated by anyone.”
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman of the Jewish Future Alliance and Rabbi Shmuel Rosenstein and Rabbi Zalman Friedman of the Jewish Community Council of the Crown Heights has issued a joint statement and reads: “There is absolutely no justification for attacking and loaded in a wheelchair -“
