A man was arrested after repeatedly crashing his car into the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in New York City on Wednesday night while people were gathered for prayer at the deeply revered Hasidic Jewish site.
No one was injured when the driver struck a door of a building in the complex before reversing and striking it several more times. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that while it was too early in the investigation to speculate on the driver’s motives, the incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime.
“This is deeply alarming, especially given the deep meaning and the history of the institution to so many in New York and around the world,” said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who called the crash “intentional.”
Video of the crash that was posted online shows a car with New Jersey license plates moving forward and backward on an icy driveway leading to a building in the complex and ramming its basement-level doors.
The driver, who is wearing shorts, emerges, shouts to bystanders that “It slipped” and says something to police about trying to park.
Chabad Lubavitch spokesperson Motti Seligson said some of the doors were damaged in the crash.
The Chabad Lubavitch headquarters and synagogue in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood receives thousands of visitors annually. Its Gothic Revival facade is very recognizable to adherents of the Chabad movement and has inspired dozens of replicas across the world.
Commonly referred to as 770, a nod to the Eastern Parkway address of the complex’s original building, the headquarters encompasses multiple adjacent structures.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the crash “disturbing and unacceptable.”
“This could have been much worse and I’m grateful that no one was hurt,” he said in a post on social platform X. “My office is working closely with the NYPD to ensure justice is done and the community is safe.”
Neither bombs nor any other weapons were found in the car that hit the building, according to Tisch. She said it was also too early in the investigation to comment on the driver’s mental state.
The incident happened on the 75th anniversary of the date that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson became the leader of the Lubavitch movement. Schneerson died in 1994 but remains a revered figure globally.
There has been a near constant police presence around 770 Eastern Parkway for years.
The site was at the epicenter of the Crown Heights riots in 1991, when Black residents of the neighborhood attacked Jews after a child was killed by a car traveling in Schneerson’s motorcade. In 2014, a disturbed man entered the synagogue and stabbed a rabbinical student, wounding him, before being shot dead by police.
