A Crown Heights rabbi was gunned down in North Miami Beach on Saturday morning — shot in cold blood by two young men, one of whom ran away and another who tore off on a bicycle.
The shocking murder of Hasidic Rebbe Joseph Raksin sent shock waves through Brooklyn’s Orthodox communities.
Raskin, 60, belonged to the Lubavitch sect, and had been in Miami visiting his daughter and grandchildren, said community leader Isaac Abraham.
He was approached by the two men as he walked the short distance to a synagogue at around 9 a.m., according to multiple Miami press accounts.
There was a short altercation, and then one of the men pulled a gun and opened fire, Miami-Dade police said.
The killers, for whom police had no good descriptions, remained at large Saturday night.
Raskin is survived by his wife, Faigy, and seven children, according to an obituary that ran Saturday night on crownheights.info.
Good Samaritan Jean Louis Denis told Miami’s WSVN.com that he heard the gunshot, and ran out to help Raksin.
“I talked a little bit to him; he gave me his name, that he was from New York,” Denis said, “and he told me that two males were the people that did this.”
Raksin was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he later died.
“He came just for a vacation, just came Thursday night,” Raksin’s daughter, Shully Lepokovski, told WSVN.com.
“He came for a week’s vacation. He was going to be here a few days, then go to West Palm [Beach] to my other sister,” she said.
The grief-stricken daughter insisted her father was targeted in a hate crime.
“[He was killed] simply because he’s a Jew,” she told the Web site.
But police said the shooting does not appear to be a hate crime.
Still, the shooting came in the wake of a hate crime in the neighborhood which is home to 11 synagogues.
Two weeks ago, vandals scrawled swastikas and the word “Hamas’’ on a synagogue two blocks from the shooting scene.
A week before that, residents of a Jewish neighborhood in Miami Beach found two cars vandalized.
The vehicles were covered in eggs and cream cheese and graffiti reading “Hamas’’ and “Jew.’’