A 31-year-old Brooklyn man with five prior arrests has been charged with assaulting a 66-year-old rabbi in Kensington on Wednesday night, just minutes after allegedly punching an unrelated stranger who was pumping gas nearby, according to police.
Eric Avrutov allegedly cornered the rabbi without warning near Dahill Road and Cortelyou Road around 9:20 p.m. and struck him multiple times over roughly 20 seconds, according to video released by the Boro Park Shomrim patrol. The rabbi was taken to Maimonides Medical Center and listed in stable condition. Officers from the NYPD’s 66th Precinct Q-Team, identified by police as officers Baptiste and Hua, arrested Avrutov at the scene.
Avrutov was charged with assault, criminal obstruction of breathing and harassment in that attack, police said. About five minutes earlier, he allegedly punched a 60-year-old man in the face as the man pumped gas at a Shell station around the corner on Cortelyou Road, resulting in additional assault and harassment charges. His arraignments in both cases were still pending as of Thursday evening. Police said the attack on the rabbi is not being treated as a hate crime.
A Pattern of Prior Arrests
Court and police records reviewed by the NY Post show this was not Avrutov’s first violent encounter with the law. Two days earlier, on Sunday, he allegedly punched a 23-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman in the face at random near Brighton 12th Street and Brighton Beach Avenue around 11:30 a.m.
Because the top charge in that case, misdemeanor assault, was not eligible for bail under state law, Judge Duane Frankson released him under supervision, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
That same day, Avrutov was separately arrested for allegedly showing up at his grandmother’s Brooklyn home in violation of a protective order issued in June, and was charged with criminal contempt. Prosecutors requested $2,500 cash bail or a $5,000 bond in that case, but Frankson again ordered supervised release rather than detention, the DA’s office said.
Avrutov’s record also includes a 2024 gun possession arrest, a criminal trespass arrest, and a separate arrest for violating an order of protection, according to police.
Second Attack on a Jewish New Yorker
The assault on the rabbi came the same night another Jewish New Yorker was targeted in Brooklyn. Police said Devin Best, 48, a registered sex offender, chased a Jewish student at knifepoint in Crown Heights around 2:50 a.m. Wednesday, shouting “Hail f—ing Hitler” as the student escaped, according to video and police accounts.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed both incidents in a statement, calling them “horrifying and reprehensible” and noting they occurred during the High Holiday season. “I’m grateful to the NYPD officers who swiftly apprehended the two suspects,” Mamdani said. “Every New Yorker deserves to live free from harassment and violence. Our administration will continue to deploy a broad range of interventions to protect Jewish New Yorkers and root out antisemitism and hate in all its forms.”
