Trial Begins for Hasid Accused in Brutal Brooklyn Beating of Gay Black Man

Taj Patterson. Image by Handout
Two-and-a-half years after a late-night gang beating that left him partially blinded, Brooklyn man Taj Patterson is preparing to face one of his alleged assailants in court.
Mayer Herskovic, a 24-year-old Hasidic man, faces felony charges connected to the Williamsburg, Brooklyn beating in a trial that began August 29 in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Patterson is expected to testify later this week.
In his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Tim Gough described a desperate scene that unfurled after 4 a.m. on December 1, 2013, according to a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.
Patterson, who is black, was walking from a subway station in Williamsburg to his home in Fort Green after a late night out in Manhattan, when a number of Orthodox Jewish men gave chase. Gough told the court that the Shomrim, a local volunteer ultra-Orthodox security group, had received false phone reports that Patterson was vandalizing cars, according to the website dnainfo.
When Patterson banged on the door of a passing vehicle for help, the driver called 911, but refused to let Patterson in the car, telling the 911 operator that there were “too many of them.”
Patterson was then grabbed and beaten by a large group of Orthodox Jewish men. He suffered facial fractures, retinal damage, and was left nearly blind in one of his eyes, Gough said.
Gough told the court that DNA from a sneaker grabbed from Patterson during the melee and thrown onto a nearby roof was matched to Herskovic.
Herskovic’s attorney, Israel Fried, declined to make an opening statement.
Two other Hasidic men arrested in connection with the incident, Pinchas Braver, 22, and Abraham Winkler, 45, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in May and were sentenced in August to community service.
Also in May, police officials disciplined a Brooklyn police sergeant for closing the investigation into Patterson’s beating soon after the incident. The investigation was reopened only after others in the local precinct intervened.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
News Who would protect New York Jews better? Cuomo and Lander trade attacks on the campaign trail
-
News Rabbis revolt over LGBTQ+ club, exposing fight over queer acceptance at Yeshiva University
-
Opinion In Qatargate fiasco, Netanyahu’s ‘witch hunt’ narrative takes cues from Trump
-
Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.