April 27th 2012 - May 10th 2012
10 |COMMUNITY NEWS
Md. Neighborhood Watch Trial Set Against Fla. Fury By SARAH BRUMFIELD
ground and the driver hit him in the head with a hand-held radio and patted him down.
BALTIMORE (AP) — Two brothers accused of beating a black teenager while patrolling an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood are set to go on trial Monday in a case with similarities to the Trayvon Martin shooting.
The teen remembered the driver yelling, “You wanna (mess) with us, you don’t belong around here, get outta here!” according to court documents, which do not identify which brother was driving.
Associated Press, April 22, 2012
The brothers, who are white and Jewish, have claimed self-defense, saying the teen was holding a nail-studded board. Local civil rights activists hope the Martin case will draw more attention to what they believe was racial profiling by neighborhood watch vigilantes. Eliyahu and Avi Werdesheim are accused of beating a 15-year-old boy who was walking through a Baltimore neighborhood in November 2010. The brothers pulled up next to the teen in a vehicle, then got out and “surrounded him,” according to charging documents. The passenger threw the teen to the
While the teen struggled, a third man got out of a van and kneed the teen, pinning him to the ground. The teen told police that he stopped struggling and the third man continued to search him, while the teen insisted he didn’t have anything on him. Eliyahu Werdesheim told the Baltimore Jewish Times that he was acting in selfdefense because the teen was holding the piece of wood. The teen picked up the board during the encounter, but put it back down, said J. Wyndal Gordon, an attorney for the teen’s family. He said the family did not want to speak publicly.
After the trio left, the teen called police and was taken to a hospital with a cut on the back of his head and a broken wrist, according to court documents. Using a photo book compiled by investigators, the teen later identified Eliyahu Werdesheim, now 24, as one of the men who assaulted him. He was arrested after about 10 days; his now 21-year-old brother was charged two months later.
neighborhood watchers’ responsibility is to report crime, and leave interventions to police. Most follow the rules, and confrontations are rare.
The brothers are charged with seconddegree assault, false imprisonment and carrying a deadly weapon (the hand-held radio). The pair face up to 13 years in prison if convicted on all three counts. A third man, identified in a lawsuit brought by the teen’s family as Ronald Rosenbluth, does not face charges. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators don’t believe Rosenbluth was involved in the beating. Rosenbluth said he doesn’t believe there was a third person and he was only called to the scene after the incident.
In the Florida case, authorities charged neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman this month with seconddegree murder in Martin’s death Feb. 26. Zimmerman claims self-defense, but Martin’s family claims he targeted Martin mainly because he was black. Zimmerman’s father is white and his mother Hispanic.
Law enforcement officials emphasize that
>> TRIAL Pg 16
“We owe a lot of our success to communities that have stepped up and partnered with police. They help us out,” Guglielmi said. “But when they step too far, we have to hold people accountable.”
It’s unusual to have a trial in which the allegations mirror a case so prominent in the news, said Steven Levin, a former
MCC Hopes for Ramadan Expansion Ground Breaking
By Muslim Link Staff On Saturday, April 21, the Muslim Community Center (MCC) in Silver Spring, Maryland held a fundraising dinner for its masjid extension project, an $800,000 addition which will connect the masjid and the main building.
....
Attendance was lower than normal due to a wedding being held in the area which many regular donors attended; organizers are confident those donors will send in their contributions in the coming days.
>> expansion Pg 16