Violence Flares for 2nd Night in N.Y. : Race: Fifteen arrested as hundreds of policemen try to keep Jews, blacks apart. Trouble starts when car kills youth and Hasidic student is stabbed to death in retaliation.

Violence flared Tuesday night between residents and police officers in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, one day after a fatal car accident spawned retaliatory violence that left one man dead.

Fifteen police officers were injured when youths hurled bottles and rocks at lines of police in riot gear, Deputy Police Commissioner Suzanne Trazoff said. Three police vehicles were damaged, including one set afire, she said.

Two stores were looted and one was set ablaze, she said.

At least 15 arrests were made and hundreds of policemen were on the scene seeking to separate Jews and blacks, city spokesman Andrew McInnis said.

There was no immediate word of civilian injuries.

Melees the night before left 14 officers injured, 10 people arrested and a police car torched.

The violence was spawned by the death of a young black youth, who was killed Monday night by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew. In apparent retaliation, a Hasidic student from Australia was stabbed to death.

The renewed violence Tuesday occurred just after a group of black leaders walked out of a meeting with police executives and officials from Brooklyn Dist. Atty. Charles J. Hynes’ office, chanting, “No justice, no peace!”

The officials refused to act on the group’s demand that the driver of a car involved in the fatal accident be arrested, Trazoff said.

The black leaders and about 200 followers walked through rain to the scene of the accident after leaving the station house, police said.

Violence flared as stones and debris were thrown at police officers. At one point, policemen had to separate groups of Hasidic Jews and blacks.

Earlier Tuesday, Mayor David N. Dinkins, in an appeal for calm and at a briefing for reporters at City Hall, said, “We’ve had tragedy . . . . We need to assess what has happened to see to it that we don’t repeat these mistakes again, whatever mistakes may have been made.”

The chain of events began Monday evening as an unmarked police car was escorting two cars containing, among others, 89-year-old Grand Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the leader of the Lubavitch sect, a worldwide Hasidic group.

It was not clear if the last car was speeding to get through a changing light or had run a red light when it collided with another car and mounted the sidewalk, striking two black children, Police Commissioner Lee Brown said.

The station wagon, driven by Yoseph Lisef, 22, whose address was withheld by police, struck and killed Gavin Cato and seriously injured his cousin, 7-year-old Angela Cato, both of Brooklyn, Trazoff said.

Angry onlookers gathered around Lisef and his two passengers, brothers Levi and Yakov Spielman, and began attacking the three men as an ambulance from the city’s Emergency Medical Service and a private Hasidic-run community ambulance arrived.

Police officers at the scene ordered the private ambulance to remove the driver and two passengers “in the interests of preserving the peace,” Brown said. The three Hasidic men were treated at Methodist Hospital and released.

“The city ambulance took care of the two young children that were hurt,” Brown said.

As descriptions of the accident swept through the crowd, a rumor began that the three Hasidic men had received medical treatment before the two black children.

As the rumor swept the community, police officers in riot gear were called in to control the crowds, which began throwing stones and bottles.

Black youths, in groups ranging from 25 to 40, began rampaging through Crown Heights, Brown said. Shortly thereafter, a Hasidic student from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, was fatally stabbed. Rosenbaum was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he later died.

Two men were arrested in the stabbing, police said.