Rabbi Dies After Livery Cab Runs Over Him 3 Times
By Josh Nathan-Kazis July 1, 2015
A Lubavitcher rabbi was struck three times by a livery cab in Brooklyn on June 29, killing him.
The rabbi, Yekutiel Rapp, 66, was hit on a street near his home in the Crown Heights neighborhood. The livery cab hit Rapp while attempting to reverse into a parking space, then sped over him.
“People were screaming, ‘Stop the car,’” witness Josh Fish told local news website DNAinfo. “He backed up over the guy three times.”
Rapp was a faculty member at a yeshiva located at the headquarters of the Lubavitch movement at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights. A father of four, he moved to Brooklyn from Israel at the age of 20. Upon his death, Chabad-linked news sites posted a number of photos of Rapp with the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.
A large funeral procession was held for Rapp in Crown Heights on June 30.
An NYPD spokesperson said on July 1 there had been no arrests and the investigation was ongoing.
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