Crown Heights Riot - Car Accident Precipitating The Riot

Car Accident Precipitating The Riot

At approximately 8:20 pm on August 19, 1991, Yosef Lifsh, 22, was driving a station wagon with three passengers west on President Street, part of the three-car motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic sect. The procession was led by an unmarked police car with two officers, with its rooftop light flashing.

Lifsh's vehicle fell behind. He continued through the intersection at President Street and Utica Avenue in an attempt to rejoin the group. Witnesses could not agree upon Lifsh's speed and could not agree whether the light that Lifsh went through was yellow or red. Lifsh's vehicle struck a car being driven on Utica Avenue, veered onto the sidewalk, knocked a 600-pound stone building pillar down and hit a wall that collapsed and killed seven-year old Gavin Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants. Angela Cato, his seven year old cousin, survived but was badly injured.

Lifsh believed he had the right of way to proceed through the intersection because of the police escort. Lifsh said he deliberately steered his car away from adults on the sidewalk, toward the wall, a distance of about 25-yards (22.9 m), in order to stop the car. Lifsh later commented that the car did not come to a full stop upon impact with the building, but rather slid to the left along the wall until it reached the children.

Accounts differ as to the next sequence of events. After the collision, Lifsh said that the first thing he did was to try to lift the car in order to free the two children beneath it. The EMS unit that arrived on the scene about three minutes after the accident said that Lifsh was being beaten and pulled out of the station wagon by three or four men. All accounts agree that Lifsh was beaten before ambulances and police arrived. A volunteer ambulance from the Hatzolah ambulance corps arrived on the scene at about 8:23 pm, followed shortly by police and a City ambulance, which took Gavin Cato to Kings County Hospital, arriving at 8:32 pm; Cato was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Volunteers from a second Hatzolah ambulance helped Angela Cato, until a second City ambulance arrived and took her to the same hospital.

Two attending police officers, as well as a technician from the City ambulance, directed the Hatzolah driver to remove Lifsh from the scene for his safety, while Gavin Cato was being removed from beneath the station wagon. According to the New York Times, more than 250 neighborhood residents, mostly black teenagers, many of whom were shouting "Jews! Jews! Jews!", jeered the driver of the car and then turned their anger on the police.

Some members of the community were outraged because Lifsh was taken from the scene by a private ambulance service while city emergency workers were still trying to free the children who were pinned under the car. Some falsely believed that Gavin Cato died because the Hatzolah ambulance crew was unwilling to help non-Jews. Their anger was compounded due by a false rumor at the time that Lifsh was intoxicated. A breath alcohol test administered within 70 minutes of the accident indicated this was not the case. Other false rumors circulating shortly after the accident included: Lifsh was on a cell phone, Lifsh did not have a valid driver's license, and that police prevented people, including Gavin Cato's father, from assisting in the rescue.

Later that evening, as the crowds and rumors grew, people threw bottles and rocks. At about 11:00 pm, someone reportedly shouted, “Let's go to Kingston Avenue and get a Jew!" A number of black youths then set off westward toward Kingston Avenue (seven-tenths of a mile away from Utica Avenue), a street of predominantly Jewish residents several blocks away, vandalizing cars and heaving rocks and bottles as they went.