Washington Post: The New York Police Department announced on Tuesday that they are seeking five individuals in connection with the suspected arson, which took place in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood Sunday evening. AS the bus was empty, no one was injured. Surveillance footage caught grainy flashes of the culprits, who have all been identified by the police as black males.
An 11-year-old boy has already been arrested charged with arson and criminal mischief as a juvenile. The fire is also being investigated as a hate crime.
The school bus, which suffered significant damage, belonged to Bnos Chomesh Academy, according to the Associated Press. It is a private, all-girls Orthodox Jewish high school that teaches “a Torah way of life.”
“It was purposefully done with prior planning,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told the AP. “Clearly this was a religious school bus. Anyone in the community knows that.”
The fire came within a week of two other alleged attacks on members of Crown Heights’s Jewish community. A Jewish man wearing religious garb was hit with rubber bands and subsequently punched by a 13-year-old African American last Thursday, authorities told the AP.
The day before, the bus driver of another Jewish school in neighborhood said someone had pelted his side mirror with a brick, shattering it.
