By ALEX GINSBERG
June 4, 2008
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the Orthodox Jewish man suspected in a bias attack that has stirred racial tensions in Crown Heights, sources said yesterday.
Yitzhak Shuchat, 25, a member of the Jewish vigilante group Shmira Civilian Patrol, was the subject of a secret Brooklyn grand-jury investigation into the April 4 attack on Andrew Charles, 20, a black college student who is the son of a police officer.
Sources said Shuchat was believed to have fled to Canada - and may have moved on to Israel.
Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes convened the grand jury so his investigators could use subpoena power to squeeze witnesses he claimed were not cooperating with police following the incident.
According to police, Charles was attacked as he walked along Albany Avenue by two men - one on a bicycle and one in an SUV - who sprayed him with Mace and smashed him with a nightstick.
Law-enforcement officials early on in the investigation said the attack was linked to members of the Shmira.
"You can't have a group, whether it's the Bloods, Crips or Shmira, acting like vigilantes," Hynes told The Jewish Week of New York on April 29.
In 1991, riots erupted after a 7-year-old black boy was fatally struck by a driver in a convoy for a Hasidic rabbi. A Jewish rabbinical student from Australia was murdered in apparent retribution.
