Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn) 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.

The suspect, identified as Shawn Schraeder, was charged with assault in the third degree in the October 7th attack outside Barclays Center that left Petlakh with a broken nose and severe lacerations. Petlakh had just left the Nets-Maccabi Tel Aviv exhibition game with his children when he was attacked.

Assemblyman Cymbrowitz said he finds the fact that there�s 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.

In a letter sent to the district attorney today, Assemblyman Cymbrowitz noted that �Mr. Schraeder was part of a group of anti-Israel protestors whose intentions turned hateful and violent.�

�The attack took place amid a barrage of anti-Semitic slurs such as �You are child murderers� and �Free Palestine,�� Assemblyman Cymbrowitz said. He also noted that Schraeder, �who disguises himself as Shawn Carrie on the Internet and made it known that he was at Barclays on the night of the attack,� has since taken took down his Facebook page and profile picture.

�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,� he said.

�I urge you to seek justice for the anti-Semitic attack on Leonard Petlakh and to vigorously pursue the accomplices who fled after the attack and bring them to justice as well,� he said.

(YWN Desk – NYC)