The day before he’d be charged with ramming his car into the doors of Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn, Dan Sohail prayed at a yeshiva in Carteret, New Jersey, telling those around him: ‘God calls me every day,’ the Daily News has learned.
A rabbi at Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret told The News that Sohail, on Tuesday afternoon, told congregants there about his belief that he was Jewis and spoke of his frustrations with certain Chabad groups.
Before he left the Garden State house of worship to head to Brooklyn, his car ended up getting stuck in the snow, Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz said. Congregants helped dig his car out, he said.
Just over 24 hours later, he was facing hate crime charges after being arrested for repeatedly ramming the side entrance of the Chabad World Headquarters with his Honda, sending congregants scrambling for cover, police and prosecutors said.
On Tuesday, Sohail, 36, walked into the NJ yeshiva through an unlocked door in one of the school’s offices, but administrators brushed it off, figuring they’d missed his knocks at their locked front door.
After attending the yeshiva’s 15 minute prayer service, Sohail remained at the school for another hour and a half, speaking to a group of teenage students in their study hall, Teitz, 65, said.
“He was very polite sitting there,” said the rabbi. “He was totally calm, normal demeanor. No one felt threatened by him.”
Teitz, said their yeshiva is the only Jewish house of worship in town, where forty roughly high-school age students attend.
“He told one of the students, and one of the administration people reported that he said that he was Jewish, although not by Jewish law necessarily, but he thought that he was Jewish, that God talks to him and that’s why he’s searching,” Teitz explained.
As he started to leave, Sohail became upset after noticing that his car was stuck in the snow in the parking lot, and stormed back inside the yeshiva.
“He was agitated by his car being stuck and kind of lashed out a little bit,” said the rabbi.
“One of the deans turns over to him and says, ‘You can’t really talk that way in the study hall. Can we take it outside?’” the rabbi continued. “That’s where he made some comments about not having found satisfaction with a Chabad House in this place or the Chabad House in that place.”
A group of students helped shoveled Sohail’s car out of the snow and he went on his way.
“That was it,” the rabbi said. “There was not anything to give us any inkling as to what was going to happen.”
The next night about 8:45 p.m., Sohail repeatedly rammed into a side entrance of the Chabad headquarters located on Eastern Parkway near Kingston Ave. in Crown Heights, causing more than $1,500 worth of damage. No one was injured.
Sohail was charged with attempted assault, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and aggravated harassment — all as hate crimes, meaning, if convicted, he would be subjected to harsher sentencing. He’s also charged with disrupting a religious service.
Prosecutors called the incident “an unacceptable, brazen attack on the Chabad Lubavitch community” during his brief arraignment, where a Brooklyn judge ordered him held on $500,000 cash bail and denied a psychological exam.
Rabbi Teitz said Sohail didn’t strike him as a bigot.
“This was not an anti-semitic attack, it was just that he was frustrated with the whole Lubavitch movement, because he felt they weren’t addressing his needs, so he took it out on the door with his car,” the rabbi said.
Sohail was not religious growing up, but had recently told his grandmother he wanted to convert to Judaism, his father previously told the News.
“He was talking to his grandma,” Majid, 61, told the Daily News. “He said, ‘I’m converting into Jewish.’ … He can pick and choose whatever he wants, you know? We don’t have any issue.”
Majid, who hasn’t spoken to Sohail in at least five years, said he struggles with some kind of mental issues.
“He have some kind of depression, something in his mind, I don’t know why,” the father said.
Sohail had visited synagogues recently in an effort to convert but had been rebuffed, according to police sources. When he recently visited a synagogue in South Brunswick, N.J., congregants called police because Sohail was found yelling outside the house of worship.
Police didn’t arrest Sohail then, but recommended he go to a mental health counselor, sources said.
Local police have upped patrols near the Carteret yeshiva in response to the ramming incident in Brooklyn.
“Just in case, you know, they don’t want any copycats or things like that,” the rabbi said. “It’s nice to have the presence.”
