Youth Cleared in Slaying of Jewish Student

A black teen-ager was acquitted Thursday of stabbing to death a rabbinical student during a riot last year in a neighborhood shared by blacks and Jews.

Lemrick Nelson, 17, had been accused of killing Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, of Melbourne, Australia, during unrest that erupted after a black youth was struck by a car from a Jewish leader’s motorcade and fatally injured.

Rosenbaum, a scholar and rabbinical student, was in Brooklyn researching the Holocaust.

Seven-year-old Gavin Cato’s death on Aug. 19 touched off days of unrest between blacks and Jews. Police and reporters were injured and dozens of protesters were arrested. Mayor David N. Dinkins was chased from the neighborhood by an angry mob.

Prosecutors said Nelson stabbed Rosenbaum after becoming caught up in the violence that broke out after Cato was run down by an out-of-control car from the motorcade of the Lubavitch grand rebbe. The rebbe is the leader of the ultraconservative Hasidic Jewish sect based in the borough of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood.

A state Supreme Court jury acquitted Nelson of murder and manslaughter charges after four days of deliberations. He showed no reaction as the verdict was announced.

Later, Nelson told reporters: “I was in a state of shock.” He had been jailed since his arrest 14 months ago.

The verdict touched off an angry response from the Hasidic Jewish community.

About 1,000 people gathered at a rally in Crown Heights Thursday evening. It was generally peaceful, although police reported one arrest and one injury from thrown bottle.

Immediately after the verdict, about 100 Hasidic Jews gathered outside the courthouse and chanted, “Every Jew a .22”--a reference to a small-caliber firearm.

“You can slaughter a Jew in the city today and walk the streets a free man,” said Yehuda Kapaloun, one of the protesters. ‘Yankel Rosenbaum’s fate was decided by a jury of what was certainly not his peers.”

The jury was made up of six blacks, four Latinos and two whites.

At City Hall, Dinkins pleaded for calm and announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rosenbaum’s killer.