Brooklyn Chabad Lubavitch tunnel diggers refused NYPD order to leave tunnel they dug, says DA

NEW YORK — When cops were called to a basement sanctuary at Brooklyn’s Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, they found four rabbinical students inside a tunnel refusing to come out of the tunnel they created, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dov Bear Shenhav, 20, Shmuel Malka, 19, Blumenfeld Yerachmiel, 20, and Henachem Mulakando, 19, “refused” to get out of the hole in the damaged wall at the famed Orthodox headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights Monday evening as they tried to complete a tunnel that would lead them to a vacant building about 55 feet away, according to court documents.

City Department of Buildings forensic engineers remained at the Chabad headquarters on Wednesday, continuing their inspection of the tunnel and surrounding buildings, an agency spokesman said. As of Wednesday afternoon, no violations had been issued, according to the agency’s Buildings Information System.

Building inspectors were looking into a complaint that a “construction in progress” was destroying the foundations of Chabad headquarters and neighboring buildings.

“(They’re) building a tunnel underneath my property,” says an inspection document, apparently quoting a complainant.

Cops called to the scene at 6 p.m. Monday found the four students “inside a hole inside a damaged wall,” according to court documents.

“(Cops) repeatedly ordered defendants to leave said wall through both words and gestures but defendants refused to do so,” the documents note.

All four men were charged with obstructing government administration after they were finally removed from the hole.

Yerachmiel and Muakando were also charged with criminal mischief after being caught on security video pulling the sanctuary’s wooden panels of with their bare hands and breaking the concrete wall with a crowbar, prosecutors said.

A fifth suspect, Levi Ytz Lahav, 20, was charged with obstructing governmental administration by pulling one of his friends away from police as he was taken into custody.

A dozen rabbinical students were taken into custody following the 6 p.m. chaos inside the sanctuary. Nearly all of them live in dorms on Eastern Parkway or in the Chabad headquarters.

Five of those charged were freed without bail at arraignment late Tuesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court .

Four more rabbinical students taken into custody were released with desk appearance tickets after being charged with attempted criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.

Cops were called to the Chabad headquarters after the students began bashing the sanctuary’s cement wall, opening a small tunnel they had dug from the basement of a building up the block on Kingston Ave.

The students were attempting to fulfill a demand by Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who had called for the expansion of the house of worship back in 1972. Many Chabad members revere Schneerson as a messiah.

Chabad administrators had discovered the secret, illegal tunnel and ordered it sealed with cement. A contractor was about to pour the cement when the students began breaking the sanctuary wall.

Video of the mayhem in the sanctuary shows students throwing over benches and cops trying to push people back from the mouth of the tunnel, which at some points was covered with a sheet.

Additional videos show students pulling wooden paneling from the wall and using hammers to break the cement blocks.

Chabad leaders called the students who tried to build the tunnel “messianic student extremists.”

“The Chabad-Lubavitch community is pained by the vandalism of a group of young agitators who damaged the synagogue,” Chabad Chairman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky said in a statement. “These odious actions will be investigated and the sanctity of the synagogue will be restored. Our thanks to the NYPD for their professionalism and sensitivity.”

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