{"id":355920,"date":"2026-09-24T18:28:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T18:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355920\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T18:28:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T18:28:49","slug":"man-with-knife-yelling-heil-hitler-chases-jewish-student-in-brooklyn-charged-with-hate-crime-nypd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355920\/","title":{"rendered":"Man with knife, yelling ‘Heil Hitler!’ chases Jewish student in Brooklyn, charged with hate crime: NYPD"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man was arrested and charged with a hate crime<\/a> for threatening a Jewish student and chasing him down a Brooklyn street with a knife while shouting, \u201cHeil Hitler!\u201d cops said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Devin Best, 48, was arrested and charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime and menacing after cursing at the 24-year-old victim and chasing him with a knife down Park Place near New York Ave. in Crown Heights<\/a> while yelling the Nazi salute around 2:48 a.m., according to police.<\/p>\n

The victim can be seen running full speed away from a man chasing him down with a knife before escaping into a building in a harrowing video<\/a> taken from a surveillance camera, posted on X by Crown Heights Shmira. The man then menacingly points his knife at the building\u2019s front door for several seconds and seethes, \u201cNow I know where you live! That\u2019s what I wanted! Heil f\u2014in\u2019 Hitler!\u201d<\/p>\n

He also spews an anti-Black racial slur at the victim, who is white, plus two derogatory sexist slurs.<\/p>\n

The man then appears to stab and slash the tires of a bicycle in front of the building before storming off, the video shows.<\/p>\n

The victim, who can be seen in the video wearing a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl, and yarmulke, is identified as a \u201cbochur,\u201d or Yeshiva student, by Crown Heights Shmira, a neighborhood volunteer patrol.<\/p>\n

Best lives in the Bronx, according to police.<\/p>\n

In a separate incident, a man was arrested for beating up a 66-year-old rabbi on Dahill Road near Cortelyou Road in Borough Park around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, police said. Cops arrested Eric Avrutov, 31, and charged him with assault, criminal obstruction of breathing and harassment.<\/p>\n

The victim was taken to Maimonides Medical Center in stable condition.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear if the incident was antisemitic. It is not being investigated as a hate crime at this time, police said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast night, a Rabbi was attacked in Boro Park and a Yeshiva student was chased by a knife-wielding man screaming \u201cHeil Hitler\u201d in Crown Heights,\u201d Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso posted<\/a> on X on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m appalled by these horrific antisemitic acts. Brooklyn must be safe for all \u2014 we cannot tolerate attacks on our Jewish neighbors,\u201d Reynoso wrote.<\/p>\n

The number of hate crimes in the five boroughs has increased<\/a> by 15% so far this year compared to at this point last year, with 58 additional confirmed incidents, according to NYPD statistics. Of the 45 confirmed hate crimes in August, 19, or 42%, were antisemitic incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man was arrested and charged with a hate crime for threatening a Jewish student and chasing him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3862,98,100,99,102,132634,15582,86499,128022,132633,9,24,63,103],"class_list":["post-355920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-antisemitism","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-crown-heights","tag-devin-best","tag-hate-crime","tag-heil-hitler","tag-jewish-victim","tag-man-with-knife","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}