in ocean county officials are pressing

federal authorities to investigate

possible hate crimes after a man was

arrested for carjacking a driver hitting

two pedestrians and stabbing a civilian

all within a seven-hour time frame in

the jackson and lakewood communities an

area largely populated by orthodox jews

the incident is being investigated by

multiple law enforcement agencies but

neighbors in the area say they're living

in fear senior correspondent brenda

flanigan reports as part of our ongoing

series exploring hate on anti-semitism

racism and extremism they're traumatized

they're traumatized lakewood's rabbi

abby schnall says while victims families

and the jewish community have embraced

each other with support they're still

struggling with the terror and trauma

inflicted friday after vicious attacks

apparently directed against jews by

27-year-old dion marsh of manchester

schnall's outraged for all technical

purposes this guy was out to murder jews

nothing less

that was his intent

the fact that these people survived

was a miracle marsh remains in custody

for allegedly carjacking a vehicle

running over two pedestrians and

stabbing a third man in the chest in

lakewood and jackson schnall says one

victim's kids saw the attack it's not

like to go

outside they sought they witnessed it

this was the busiest time of the week

right before the the the shabbos came in

so children are going to shoal children

are helping out last minute at home so

so many people witness different parts

of it right rabbi shrewly fried heads a

kids crisis intervention team counseling

families he says the community is

resilient and it's coping but that

children are particularly hard hit kids

were eating their meals all over

lakewood on friday night and heard the

choppers

hovering overhead from law enforcement

so there was like a direct impact

on everyone freed's advising parents to

listen to their children's fears and

reassure them they're safe in their

community and that the alleged suspects

been arrested the community leaders

continue to grapple with this latest

outburst of bias hatred rabbi david levy

says law enforcement reported marsh

expressed that clearly it seems at least

from the early reports that it was

clearly an act of hate the vast majority

of hate crimes against faith

communities are against jews

for two percent of the population and in

the last report 55 percent

of faith-based hate crimes were against

the jewish community scott richmond's

with the anti-defamation league he says

new york and new jersey led the nation

in the number of bias crimes reported

last year and that new jersey's attorney

general reported a steep 29 percent

spike in hate crimes experts blame deep

political divisions that have inflamed

long-seated prejudices social media is

most assuredly a big driver of hate over

the past few years

uh social media has become a platform

for people to get out their hateful

views people will put up a facebook page

and they'll write something it will

elicit

comments

and some of them are just horrible mayor

michael rayner says jackson officials

will try to set up a community meeting

so people can get to know one another

better and debunk the conspiracy

theories that motivate hate crimes but

he says people are too polarized so they

just need something to spark

and right now it's a bad time for this

this type of unrest or this type of

hatred out there congressman chris smith

met with one victim's family he's

calling on the fbi to investigate

whether this was a federal hate crime

and my hope is that by being very

aggressive law enforcement the fbi and

local government

and local police enforcement can ensure

that there's no copycats uh that there

is sure and and swift justice met it out

marsh is scheduled for a detention

hearing tomorrow april 13th i'm brenda

flanagan nj spotlight news

major funding for exploring hate has

been provided by the sylvia a and simon

b poita programming endowment to fight

anti-semitism

sue and edgar wachenheim iii

charlotte and david ackert

the peter g peterson and joan ganz

cooney fund

patty esquith kenner

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