Yeshiva Student Attacked by Skinhead Moves Quickly to Capture His Assailant

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is continuing its investigation of an attack last week by a self-### laimed skinhead on a yeshiva student.

The victim, Zev Katz, a 19-year-old student working as a counselor at a Chabad summer camp for Russian immigrant children here, suffered minor bruises after being attacked with a three-foot pipe and a screw driver.

Katz, who attends a Lubavitch yeshiva in Miami, said he was sitting in a parked car on the evening of July 5 when “this guy came out of nowher, yelling ‘I hate Jews! I’ll kill you!”

Katz said he was hit in the stomach once, before he grabbed the pipe and his friend grabbed the screwdriver.

Katz and others chased the fleeing attacker for about 150 feet, tackled him in an alley, and then sat on him until the police arrived.

The suspect was identified as Shane Dale McCain, an 18-year old transient, who said he was a skinhead, according to a Sheriff’s spokesman. McCain was booked on suspicion of committing a hate crime and assault with a deadly weapon and is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail.

Rabbi Mayer Schmukler of the Chabad Russian Synagogue, which runs the summer camp, said that Katz was wearing a T-shirt, corduroy pants and a yarmulke at the time of the attack.

Schmukler’s colleague, Rabbi Naftoli Estulin, said that the incident was “a rude awakening in our normally peaceful neighborhood. You read about this elsewhere, but so far we’ve had few problems. I would call it shocking.”

The Anti-Defamation League condemned the attack on Katz and said it emphasized the need for a statewide program to keep track of hate crimes.

“For several years now, we have attempted to persuade the (state) attorney general and the governor to implement such a statistic-gathering policy, but unforturnately to no avail,” said Tzivia Schwartz, ADL’s Western states counsel.