Agitator Tied Directly to Crown Hts. Attack
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A witness in the trial of two men accused in the fatal stabbing of a Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights testified yesterday that the same man who incited an angry black crowd at the scene of an auto accident also directed the attack on the victim at short time later. The witness, Cleon Taylor, who was initially arrested himself in the stabbing but quickly released, did not identify the man who whipped up the crowd and directed the attack as one of the defendants. But other witnesses in Federal District Court in Brooklyn have identified one defendant, Charles Price, as the man who exhorted the crowd to retaliate against Hasidim after a car accident in the Brooklyn neighborhood in August 1991. In the accident, a car driven by another Hasidic man struck and killed a black child. Mr. Taylor’s testimony was an important connection that Federal prosecutors are seeking to make in their case against Mr. Price, a 43-year-old man with a long history of minor crimes and drug addiction. More : query.nytimes.com |