Lebanese Cab Driver Arrested in Attack on Jewish Students in N.Y.

Police arrested a 28-year-old Lebanese cab driver Wednesday and charged him with being the gunman who staged a bloody attack on a van packed with Jewish students.

After witnesses helped reconstruct the license plate of the car used in the attack on the Brooklyn Bridge, police arrested Rashad Baz at his home in Brooklyn and charged him with 15 counts of attempted murder, four counts of assault and several weapons possession violations.

Officers also seized a small arsenal of high-powered weapons during the arrest, authorities said.

Arrested later were two Jordanians, Hlai Mohammad, 32, and Bassam Reyati, 27, both of Brooklyn. They were charged with hindering prosecution of a crime and possession of a weapon. A police spokesman said officials believe that they helped Baz dispose of the guns and the car used in the attack.

Police said it was too early to determine a motive for the attack, which left one young man brain-dead and another critically wounded and raised fears that the gunman was retaliating for the massacre of Palestinian worshipers by an extremist Jew in the West Bank city of Hebron.

“We are comfortable he is the shooter at the bridge yesterday,” Police Commissioner William Bratton said at a City Hall news conference, where the first arrest was announced.

But, as the search for a motive continued, detectives indicated they were questioning additional witnesses and people who knew Baz.

“We are not ruling out anything at this juncture,” Bratton said.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said members of the city’s Arab American community had provided help in the investigation and that the arrest sent a signal: “Our streets are not open to bloodshed.”

“It is a remarkable result to have the shooter in custody,” said Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau, whose office will prosecute the case. “The investigation is not over. There is a long way to go.”

Detectives who arrested Baz, who entered the United States on a student visa in 1984, found no political literature, but they recovered a cache of weapons, including two 9-millimeter pistols--the type used to shoot at the van--a fully loaded shotgun known in the drug trade as a “street sweeper,” a semiautomatic rifle, a silencer, a stun gun and a bulletproof vest.

A blue Chevrolet described by witnesses as the vehicle used in the shooting was recovered in a Brooklyn body shop. Shell casings from the kind of bullets fired at the van were found in the auto, police said.

Police ballistics experts conducted tests, comparing bullets fired from the seized weapons to bullets recovered from the van.

The white van with 15 Hasidic students was attacked Tuesday by a lone gunman firing two pistols. The students were returning from a Manhattan hospital where Grand Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Lubavitcher sect, had undergone cataract surgery.

Four students were hurt in three separate bursts of gunfire--on an approach ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge and later in the middle of the span.

Physicians said Aaron Halberstam, 20, one of the victims, was on life-support with an irreversible brain trauma. They said that the outlook for his recovery was “zero.”

A second student, who was also shot in the head, was in critical condition with an “extremely poor” prognosis, according to officials at at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.

Doctors said that two other wounded students would recover.

President Clinton telephoned Halberstam’s family Wednesday. “My prayers are with them, with their son and with all of those affected by this spasm of brutal violence,” Clinton said. “It is an outrage that this crime, which has overtones of a hate crime, could occur in our American community. It is a tragedy that such a tender, intelligent boy could be the victim of such brutality and immutable violence.”

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson in Washington contributed to this story.