CROWN HEIGHTS MULTI-CULTURAL CO-OPERATION SAVES GIRL

Early Friday morning, May 2^nd, a girl was walking from the subway station and forced at knifepoint to enter an apartment building where she was taken to the top of the stairwell. She screamed for help as the perpetrator began to unfasten and strip her of her jeans.

The building, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is home to a mixture of predominately Black residents, and a few Chassidic Jews. The screams were heard by a Chassidic man living on the top floor. Well aware that he would be intervening in a scenario outside of his own culture and therefore could be risking his own life, he took his phone in hand and ventured out to trace the screams. Announcing first “Are you in need of assistance?” Leonid Yavich frightened off the assailant and called 911. “At first I chased the criminal,” said Yavich. “I realized I could not catch him, so I went back and waited with the girl. She was hysterical. The police came quickly. A detective called me the next day to confirm the details. He was very emotional when he told me that I literally saved the girl.” Both the assailant and the victim were Black.

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