Cell phone video shot by witness. Graphic content.
The New York Post reports:
Police shot and killed a disturbed man inside one of Brooklyn’s most prominent synagogues Tuesday morning, apparently after he asked for a Bible and then stabbed someone there, sources said.
The bloodshed happened at the world headquarters of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights shortly after 1 a.m., sources said.
Calvin Peters, 50, had walked into the basement of the synagogue where people were praying, sources said.
According to police sources, Peters asked for a copy of the Bible, then briefly walked out, sources said.
He returned and stabbed a an Israeli student in the side of the head for an unknown reason.
“He’s a very serious student he’d been studying all day,” witness Levi Deutsch said about the victim. “He was stabbed in the side of the head he was conscious but he was bleeding a lot.”
Another witness flagged down cops who were passing the headquarters.
Officers then confronted the man in an encounter that was captured on a dramatic video.
The cops warned Calvin Peters, believed to be homeless, to put down his knife several times. After finally putting it down, he grabbed it once more and lunged at the police officer, causing the officer to fire the fatal shot.
Mere weeks after the lethal stabbing attack conducted by Palestinian militants on a Jerusalem synagogue, CNN included this quote in their report:
“Most likely it is not a hate crime,” said Mony Ender, the deputy spokesman for Chabad Lubavitch in lsrael. “The assailant was not (running) amok. He stabbed one person, with an ordinary kitchen knife, although he could have attacked many more people who were there.”
However, according to the New York Daily News, the NYPD anti-terror unit was called out to the scene:
An Israeli student praying in a Brooklyn synagogue was stabbed in the neck early Tuesday after a knife-wielding maniac burst inside and yelled “I want to kill the Jew!”
…”I will kill the Jew! I want to kill the Jew!” a witness heard the attacker yelling as he entered the 24-hour religious center.
…A 25-year-old Israeli who was in the synagogue said he saw Peters enter and leave the building an hour before the attack.
“He was looking around, He asked for a book,” that witness said. “He looked not so much crazy, but different.”
When the man returned, he was armed with a knife in his hand and anger in his voice.
“I never thought it would happen in New York,” the witness told The News. “These things don’t need to happen.”
The stabbing victim is currently hospitalized in stable condition.
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