Man Convicted of Murdering Jewish Student

A jury convicted a Lebanese immigrant Thursday of murdering a Jewish teen-ager in an ambush on the Brooklyn Bridge, rejecting his claim that he was suffering a flashback from his childhood in war-torn Beirut.

Rashid Baz, a livery cab driver, admitted he strafed the van with bullets on March 1 as it drove onto the bridge carrying 15 students. Sixteen-year-old Aaron Halberstam was killed and three other people were wounded.

Baz’s lawyer, Eric Sears, blamed his client’s “catastrophic” childhood in Beirut, where he became a soldier at age 9. He said Baz suffers post-traumatic stress syndrome, which climaxed in the bridge shooting.

Baz, 28, said he fired at the van after people in it mouthed insults and leveled a gun at him.

Nachum Sosonkin, 18, a van passenger who was shot in the head and was the most badly injured of the three wounded survivors, testified at the trial that he never heard anyone inside the van say anything to Baz or display a gun.

The jury deliberated a day before convicting Baz of second-degree murder and 14 counts of attempted murder.

Baz, who immigrated from Lebanon at age 18, faces 25 years to life in prison at his Jan. 18 sentencing.

The shooting occurred as the young men, dressed in the distinctive black garb worn by ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher Jews, returned from a visit to the Manhattan hospital where the Lubavitchers’ leader, Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, was being treated.

The prosecution cited testimony by Baz’s uncle, Jamal Akel, that Baz’s problems predated the start of Lebanon’s civil war in 1975 and that much of his behavior was shocking--even in Beirut.