Fbi Probes Yeshiva Shooting

The FBI continued today its investigation of the shooting attack last Wednesday near Yeshiva University in upper Manhattan in which two rabbinical students and a Yeshiva high school student were wounded.

“We are still in the preliminary stages of the investigation,” Ken Walton, deputy assistant director of the FBI in New York told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said the FBI has no new leads so far regarding the case.

Meanwhile, the New York Police Department was continuing to maintain a heavy presence around Yeshiva University. Police Commissioner Robert McGuire said that a ream of 10 detectives was assigned to investigate the case. But he pointed out that unlike similar attacks, no one has claimed responsibility for the Yeshiva University shooting, and two similar other attacks against Jewish targets in the Washington Heights area in the last three weeks, a fact that makes the investigation more difficult.

The police disclosed that ballistic tests indicated the weapons used in the shooting at Heshie’s restaurant had been used in a shooting near Jewish Memorial Hospital on June 9. The police said the attacks were connected with a June 7 incident in which shots were fired into the lobby of a Yeshiva University building.

REWARDS OFFERED

A reward fund of $3,000, to supplement the $10,000 reward offered by New York City for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the gunmen who attacked the restaurant near Yeshiva University, was announced at a meeting at the American Jewish Committee last Friday. Also on Friday the American Jewish Congress announced that the FBI decided to enter the investigation, following a request by the Congress to the Justice Department.

At the AJCommittee meeting, representatives of the Jewish and Hispanic communities, together with representatives of the police department and leaders of other ethnic and religious groups expressed their outrage at the attack and their determination to join forces to prevent such attacks in the future.

The AJCommittee’s New York Chapter pledged $1,000 of the $3,000 reward; the New York Jewish Community Relations Council pledged $1,000; and Lawrence Tisch, president of the JCRC, pledged a personal contribution on behalf of the JCRC of $1,000. An AJCommittee spokesman said it was “hoped” that the reward fund “will match or surpass” the $10,000 pledged by Mayor Edward Koch to aid the capture of the gunmen.

Last week’s attack took place at about 11:30 a.m. when “three or four men” described by eyewitnesses as “Hispanic looking,” fired about 20 shots from a speeding car into the kosher restaurant across from the main building of Yeshiva University.

Wounded in the attack were Yossef Zimmerman, 40, and Abraham Weintraub, 26, both senior rabbinical students at the University. Weintraub was treated and released from the hospital the same day. Zimmerman was released from Presbyterian Hospital last night and his condition was described by a spokesman for the University as “stable.” The high school student who was also wounded, suffered superficial cuts and did not require hospitalization.