“By 4 [o’clock] you will not be able to liv [sic]…In apartment, don’t many [sic] any mistake. Iam [sic] sirios [sic] two minutes is up … I am almost their [sic], I am here, I have put on fire,” the alleged haredi arsonist wrote according to the criminal complaint filed against him.
Haredi Rent Collector Arsonist Charged
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
It is a case of haredi-on-haredi crime.
Last November, 57-year-old Yehuda Herskovic allegedly sent a series of threatening text messages to Moses Greenfeld. The texts were meant to force Greenfeld to pay the back rent he owed for his second floor apartment at 356 Marcy Avenue in the heavily Satmar hasidic Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
“By 4 [o’clock] you will not be able to liv [sic]…In apartment, don’t many [sic] any mistake. Iam [sic] sirios [sic] two minutes is up … I am almost their [sic], I am here, I have put on fire,” Herskovic wrote according to the criminal complaint filed against him, the New York Post reported.
Moments later, Herskovic placed cardboard in front of Greenfeld’s door and set it on fire. The door was scorched in the fire and the doormat in front of it was singed, but court papers say no one was injured in the small blaze, which Greenfeld says he saw Herskovic start.
Herskovic went on the lam and was missing in the eyes of the law until this monday Monday, almost a year later, when he finally turned himself over to NYC fire marshals. He was immediately charged with second-degree arson – a felony that could land him in prison for as much as 25 years.
Herskovic was allegedly acting as a rent collector for property owner Naftali Steinmetz. Steinmetz also lives in that building.
Prosecutors asked the court for Herskovic’s bail to be set at $25,000, in part because he fled justice, but a Brooklyn judge released him $3,000 cash bail.
[Hat Tip: Moshe in Israel.]