A man who rammed his car into the global headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish movement was sentenced to time served and seven days on Tuesday.
The man, Dan Sohail, 36, pleaded guilty in May to damaging religious property. He had spent the last six months incarcerated on Rikers Island and at a federal lockup in Brooklyn.
Mr. Sohail will be released from jail in one week. Judge Eric Vitaliano, of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ordered him to pay $19,000 in restitution to the synagogue.
On Jan. 28, Mr. Sohail drove his Honda sedan into a set of wooden doors at the bottom of a driveway at the headquarters, on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Video shows that, after crashing into the entrance several times, he got out of the car and cursed at onlookers who were yelling at him to stop.
Judge Vitaliano criticized the Justice Department for seeking a harsher sentence against Mr. Sohail, who he said needed mental health treatment and had shown neither hate nor animus when he repeatedly crashed his vehicle into the synagogue.
Jailing Mr. Sohail for a longer period would do nothing to “remove the stain of antisemitism” from New York City, Judge Vitaliano said.
“A property crime is what was charged here,” he said, raising his voice. “Not a hate crime.”
Mr. Shail was initially charged by state prosecutors with hate crimes, but the charges were later dropped.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn had sought a sentence of more than a year, a more severe judgment than what guidelines called for, citing a broader surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City. More than half of hate crimes in the city this year have targeted Jewish people, according to Police Department data.
“It is impossible to divorce this case from the wider context of what is happening at this moment in time in this city,” Eric Silverberg, a federal prosecutor, said in court. Allowing Mr. Sohail to walk free, he said, would send the wrong message during an “avalanche of anti-Jewish crime” in New York.
After learning that he had Jewish heritage, Mr. Sohail had sought to convert to Judaism in the weeks leading up to the episode. Law enforcement officers and family members said there were significant concerns about his mental health.
He toured other Hasidic centers and danced with members of the Eastern Parkway synagogue. But he was turned away from the synagogue and from others after showing increasingly alarming behavior. In court appearances earlier this year, Mr. Sohail wore a skullcap.
Mia Eisner-Grynberg, Mr. Sohail’s lawyer, said that Mr. Sohail had grown up in a turbulent household with a physically abusive father. At times as an adult, he lived out of his car.
“It’s impossible to square what he did with what he believes,” Ms. Eisner-Grynberg said in court.
Judge Vitaliano acknowledged an urgent need to protect “Jewish people and Jewish institutions” from antisemitism. Doing that, he said, was possible while also helping Mr. Sohail. Before the hearing was adjourned, he addressed Mr. Sohail.
“A hand of help has been extended to you. Please grasp it, and know that help you need is available,” Judge Vitaliano said.
“We pray it will be successful for you,” he said.
The post Mental Health Issues Cited in Sentencing of Man Who Drove Into Synagogue appeared first on New York Times.
