NEW YORK — A man was sentenced Wednesday to six months and a week behind bars for ramming his car into the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters, the Jewish institution in New York where his lawyer said he’d been trying to win acceptance as he struggled with psychological issues.
Dan Sohail, 36, was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court by a judge who declined a recommendation by prosecutors that he force Sohail to remain behind bars for another eight months. The sentence clears the way for the New Jersey man, who has already spent six months in detention, to be released in about a week.
Prosecutors had sought a stiffer sentence as a wider warning to those who might attack Jewish interests amid a dramatic rise in hate crimes against the Jewish population.
Judge Eric N. Vitaliano said he was “somewhat saddened” to see that the Justice Department wanted him to be influenced at sentencing by a mistaken initial impression among the wider public that the Jan. 28 attack was a hate crime.
No one was injured when Sohail drove his car into the Chabad Headquarters’ side entrance five times, knocking the door off its hinges and destroying his car’s front bumper. Before he drove toward the building, he waved passersby away, a fact the judge mentioned at sentencing as he ordered him to pay $20,000 in restitution.
The complex at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn includes a synagogue and offices, and was bustling with people at the time, authorities there said.
Prosecutors in their arguments prior to sentencing noted that “a staggering” 80 of 146 hate crime incidents across New York City since the start of the year were based on crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions.
Vitaliano said the government’s argument for a stiff sentence to send a deterrent message to the general public was in part based on the fact that the attack was initially cast as an “I-hate-the-Jews crime, or, worse, an act-of-terrorism crime.”
But he noted that federal prosecutors ultimately charged the Carteret, New Jersey, man with intentionally damaging religious property and Sohail pleaded guilty in mid-May.
The judge cited a psychiatric report he reviewed and said Sohail’s mental health challenges “played an important role” in his decision-making.
“This is a sad tale,” Vitaliano said.
Defense attorney Mia Eisner-Grynberg told the judge in court papers prior to the sentencing that Sohail was battling depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after a traumatizing childhood when he carried out the attack even as he “desperately sought belonging and understanding through his exploration of Judaism.”
She said Sohail attended the Chabad he eventually attacked and “found the rabbinical students there warm and welcoming.”
Eisner Grynberg said Sohail “danced with them” and followed their instructions to visit Israel, but he became erratic and extremely anxious after he returned to the United States and was “begging” members of the Chabad to assist him.
Driving the car into the building, she said, was “an irrational cry for help.”
Sohail did not speak at sentencing, but he thanked the judge at the end of the proceeding.
The crash occurred on the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson becoming the leader of the Lubavitch movement and prompted immediate concern in the city. Schneerson died in 1994, but remains a revered figure globally. There has been a near-constant police presence around the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters for years.
The site was at the epicenter of the Crown Heights riots in 1991, when Black residents of the neighborhood attacked Jews after a child was killed by a car traveling in Schneerson’s motorcade. In 2014, a disturbed man entered the synagogue and stabbed a rabbinical student, wounding him, before being shot dead by police.
