Police have changed a 23-year-old man with the murder Friday night of an Orthodox Jew who was shot to death after he told a holdup man he did not have any money on him because it was Sabbath. The victim, Israel Turner, 54, was killed in front of his home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a mixed Jewish-Black neighborhood, after returning home from Succoth celebrations at the nearby headquarters of the Lubavitcher movement.
Mr. Turner’s wife, Shifra, had been babysitting with her grandchild, when her husband, who carried no keys because of Sabbath, called to her. Mrs. Turner looked out of the window of her ground floor apartment and saw a robber confronting her husband. “Leave him alone, he has no money,” she cried. The robber fired two shots into Mr. Turner’s chest and fled. A passing car rushed Mr. Turner to the Kings County Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Mr. Turner and his wife were survivors of Auschwitz.
Minutes after the shooting, a man identified as Larry Pilgrim, of Brooklyn, was observed by two policemen as he tried to conceal a 25 caliber automatic in shrubbery just two blocks from the scene of the murder. Police said he was charged with homicide after a ballistics report showed that the gun allegedly found in his possession matched the murder weapon.
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.
