Yeshiva University announced today a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for a series of four sniper attacks on Yeshiva University students that has left several university students injured and one woman dead.
The announcement was made by Yeshiva board chairman Herbert Tenzer and senior vice president Dr. Israel Miller at a news conference at the university today. The $250,000 reward fund brings to $265,000 the total reward for information leading to the apprehension of the sniper. The city has offered $10,000 and the American Jewish Committee $5,000.
The university’s reward money comes from the university and various friends and donors to the yeshiva who prefer to remain anonymous, a university spokesman said. Some of the contributions have been small, ranging from $50 to $100, while, the spokesman added, one friend of the university contributed $50,000. WCBS-TV sportscaster Warner Wolf made a substantial contribution to the fund, the spokesman said.
The university spokesman also confirmed today that Rabbi Jay Goldberg, spiritual leader of the Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater in Far Rockaway, Queens, has initiated a fund-raising drive in which he expects his congregation to have raised $1,000 by the end of the week. Goldberg’s drive is also designed to get $1,000 donations from each synagogue in the metropolitan area.
POLICE DEPARTMENT PRAISED
Miller, at the press conference at the university’s Manhattan upper West Side campus, praised the work of the New York City Police Department in its efforts to apprehend the sniper. “They have gone far beyond doing what is right and required to apprehend the murderer, ” he said. “We have every confidence in them.”
Miller, meanwhile, took the opportunity to denounce the Jewish Defense League who yesterday began daily armed patrols of the campus area. We do not need them. We did not invite them and we do not want them here, ” he said.
Mayor Edward Koch, in a letter to university president Norman Lamm that was released at the news conference today, called the sniper attacks “despicable, ” perhaps the product of “deranged anti-Semitism,” and pledge to utilize all the available resources in the city to apprehend those responsible.
The most recent of the four attacks took place on September 18 when Lucille Rivera, a 37-year-old resident of Queens, was fatally shot while on the Cross Bronx Expressway. A Yeshiva University student travelling in a car behind Rivera’s was shot in the knee. Police said Rivera was killed by a bullet from a high powered rifle aimed at the student’s car.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
