The New York City police said they had charged a man with reckless endangerment and attempted assault on Thursday after he rammed his vehicle repeatedly into the headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch, the Hasidic Jewish group, in Brooklyn.
All four charges against Dan Sohail, 36, will be considered hate crimes, the chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said on Thursday at a news conference in Manhattan.
“He basically attacked a Jewish institution,” Chief Kenny said. “This is a synagogue. It’s clearly marked a synagogue.”
The attack on the building on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights on Wednesday evening immediately drew the condemnation of New York leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who rushed to the scene and said antisemitism would not be tolerated.
But people who knew Mr. Sohail, including his father and several Chabad rabbis, said he had not shown any outward signs of hatred toward Jewish people and had recently told them he wanted to convert to Judaism. The man appeared to be emotionally disturbed during the incident, according to three law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation.
Mr. Sohail, who had worked as a forklift driver, made several trips to synagogues, religious schools and even Jewish holiday celebrations in New York and New Jersey over the past several months, they said. He repeatedly claimed he was interested in converting to Judaism, or that he was Jewish and that God had instructed him directly to come pray.
In an interview on Thursday, his father, Sohail Majid Butt, 63, said that his son had been raised in a largely secular, multifaith home; his father is Muslim, and his mother is Catholic. He said he was certain his son did not hate Jewish people and had recently told his maternal grandmother in Poland that he planned to convert to Judaism.
“I do not think this was hate — not because I am his father; wrong things are wrong,” Mr. Butt, a truck driver, said in an interview. “I don’t think whatever has happened intentionally. There is no way.”
But he added that his son was prone to angry outbursts that frightened him enough he had called police to intervene at what had been their home in Carteret, in Central New Jersey, at least twice. The two have not spoken in at least five years, he said.
He said he would have supported his son’s decision to convert.
For the Chabad movement the episode came at a difficult moment, just six weeks after more than a dozen people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration hosted by its chapter in Sydney, Australia. It unfolded at 8:45 p.m. on Wednesday night. Shortly before then, surveillance video shows Mr. Sohail parking his car, a 2012 Honda Accord, a few blocks from the synagogue, Chief Kenny said.
He appears to walk into the alleyway of the Chabad building and move “several blockades” from the driveway and then returns to his car.
A few minutes later, Mr. Sohail drives down the driveway of the Chabad, into an alleyway, and begins to repeatedly hit the building.
The car slams into a set of wooden doors, one of which splinters and flies from its hinges. As people look on, yelling “Yo! Yo!” and “No!,” the car backs up and breaks another door. Mr. Sohail crashes into the door five times before getting out of the car. As shocked onlookers ask him what he is doing, he curses and yells at them.
After he exits the vehicle, Mr. Sohail can be heard telling a police officer, “It slipped.”
Mr. Sohail later told the police that he lost control of the car because he was wearing “clunky boots,” Chief Kenny said.
Interviews with Chabad rabbis show Mr. Sohail had engaged in something of a tour of the Hasidic centers over the past several months. He sought guidance at Chabad of South Brunswick, and had joined in prayers and celebrations elsewhere. In Carteret, a day before his arrest in Brooklyn, he tried to enter a yeshiva, or religious school, telling the rabbi there in Hebrew that he did not speak Hebrew.
About two weeks before the incident, he visited Chabad’s headquarters, once the home of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the movement’s leader who died in 1994, Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesman, said. Video that Chabad said is from that visit appears to show Mr. Sohail dancing and celebrating with a group of Lubavitcher men, wearing a skullcap. His father said it was Mr. Sohail in the video.
His visit on Wednesday began very differently from the way it ended. He appeared to come there to “continue his attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” Chief Kenny said.
The day before, he was at Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret, said Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz, a school leader. He told the rabbi he was Jewish, but was not admitted because he used foul language and appeared agitated.
“He made a statement about God sending him to us,” Rabbi Teitz said. “He felt compelled to be here religiously for some reason.”
He said Mr. Sohail grew agitated when his car became stuck in snow as he tried to leave. A group of Yeshiva students shoveled him out. “At least he didn’t get through our front door,” the rabbi said. “I’m glad for that.”
In Carteret on Thursday, a person answering the door at Mr. Sohail’s house first said he was not home and then denied that he lived there. Outside, a sign on the door read: “No politics, no charity, no religion.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
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