Brooklyn Bridge Shooting

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The Brookly Bridge Shooting was an incident that took place on March 1, 1994, when Lebanese-born Rashid Baz, armed with a Glock 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol and a 9-millimeter Cobray machine gun, shot on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish sect on the Brooklyn Bridge. Four students were injured in the attack, two seriously with gunshot wounds to the head. One of the victims, Ari Halberstam, a sixteen-year-old, died of his wounds four days later.^[1]

While under arrest, Baz confessed to the shootings and was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 141 years in prison. Although he stated the motive for the shooting was "road rage," a later report by the FBI reclassified the shootings as "the crimes of a terrorist." Shortly before the attack, Baz attended the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge, whose imam frequently incited anti-Semitism and called for the support of groups such as Hamas. At Baz' trial, it was revealed that the imam told those in attendance, "This [attack] takes the mask off the Jews. It shows them to be racist and fascist and as bad as the Nazis. Palestinians are suffering from the occupation, and it’s time to end it." ^[2]

The incident took place one week after the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre on February 25, 1994, when Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein, wearing his Israeli army uniform, entered a room serving as a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and opened fire at Muslims, killing 29 and wounding 125. Some have hypothesized that Baz' actions were related to a sermon he heard regarding the incident.^[3]

The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was named the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp in memory of the victim.^[4]