An 11-year-old boy was charged with a hate crime after he was caught on a surveillance video setting fire to a Jewish school bus in Brooklyn.
According to police, this is the neighborhood’s third anti-Semitic incident in less than a week.
The boy was joined by four others, ages ranging from 10 to 15, in setting the Yeshiva school bus on fire in Crown Heights shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday. The school bus was parked outside Beth Rivkah, a private girls school.
No one was hurt in the incident.
In a video of the incident, five adolescents run onto the school bus with pieces of cardboard. Moments later, the kids run out as flames appear toward the front of the bus. Black smoke soon engulfs the yellow school bus.
The 11-year-old was charged with both criminal mischief and arson two counts of hate crime. Police are still searching for the other four boys.
Police still do not know if the children knew the school bus was Jewish. Owned and operated by BSD Trans Corp., the school bus is not clearly marked for Yeshiva transportation. Last week, another Jewish school bus was targeted less than a mile away from Sunday’s incident, police say.
According to the New York Daily News, 46 of the 110 hate crimes in Brooklyn so far in 2016 have been anti-Semitic, up from 42 in the same time span in 2015.
