Racism Tied to Slaying of Black Youth in N.Y. : Police Say White Attackers Mistook the Victim for Boyfriend of Girl From Their Neighborhood

A gang of up to 30 whites carrying baseball bats surrounded four black teen-agers who entered a predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood to shop for a used car, and one of the blacks was shot to death, detectives said Thursday.

Police said Yusef Hawkins was shot to death Wednesday night by teen-agers who mistakenly thought he or one of his companions was the new boyfriend of a neighborhood white girl who had spurned one of the attackers. Her former boyfriend had warned her not to bring blacks and Latinos into the area, which is heavily Italian, detectives said.

Police took three suspects into custody and fanned out through the neighborhood seeking other attackers.

Howard Beach Case

The racially charged slaying, less than three weeks before New York’s tightly contested Democratic mayoral primary, evoked memories of the city’s highly publicized Howard Beach case in 1986. In that incident, which became a national symbol of urban racial polarization, a gang of white teen-agers chased one of three black men who had strayed into their neighborhood near Kennedy Airport onto a busy highway where he was killed by traffic.

The slaying Wednesday took place in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst section in a neighborhood of small shops and red brick multi-family dwellings where many residents pass the time sitting on stoops surveying passersby. Outsiders are particularly noted.

A few feet from the yellow chalked outline of where the body of Hawkins had fallen in front of a two-story apartment house, several elderly residents watched detectives and reporters taking notes.

A 76-year-old woman said blacks were not wanted in the neighborhood, but that the whites who attacked Hawkins and his companions went too far. “Chase them, beat them up a bit, give them a black eye but don’t kill them. They’re human beings,” she said.

Koch at Station

Mayor Edward I. Koch and Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward on Thursday visited the Brooklyn station house where detectives questioned the suspects--two 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old.

“I hope in this election, no one will seek to get political benefit from this tragedy,” the mayor said. As in the Howard Beach case, he called for a special state prosecutor to investigate the murder.

“We are making this a bias incident,” the police commissioner said, noting that several witnesses had told detectives the attackers uttered an epithet.

Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins, Koch’s chief opponent, visited the father of the slain Brooklyn youth. Dinkins, who is seeking to become the city’s first black mayor, was cautious in his criticism of Koch, refusing to blame him directly for racial polarization in the city.

“The tone and the climate in this city does get set at City Hall,” Dinkins said. “When one calls names or demeans or belittles people, it has a far reaching effect. So one has to be very careful of what one says or what one does.”

Police, who recovered four shell casings and seven bats but no gun hours after the shooting, said the attack appeared to be rooted in jealousy.

“We have a spurned lover who is jealous and is looking for the new boyfriend, and it turns out the new boyfriend happens to be of a color other than his,” Ward said. “ . . . I would think that he probably would have reacted against whoever the new lover was, but it happens that the new lover is black.”

18th Birthday

Detectives said a neighborhood girl had broken up with her boyfriend and was celebrating her 18th birthday with a party. Her former boyfriend and a group of his friends waited on the street outside her apartment for the girl’s new friends to arrive.

Police said that when the four blacks on their way to buy a used car unknowingly walked onto the street, an explosive case of mistaken identity occurred. The whites followed the blacks down the block.

Four shots were fired at about 9:30 p.m. Hawkins was struck twice in the chest and died later at Maimonides Medical Center. Troy Banner, 18, who was with Hawkins, suffered a minor injury to his right forearm which may have been a graze wound, authorities said. Detectives added the two other black youngsters were not injured.

Some residents were sensitive to the publicity their neighborhood was receiving. “This is a good neighborhood,” one woman who declined to give her full name told reporters. “They are trying to make this into another Howard Beach.”