LAUDERHILL, Fla. – Local 10 News spoke with an elderly man Monday, two days after he was beaten after leaving a synagogue in Lauderhill.
“He start to punch me in the face and I just protect myself,” the victim, who did not want to be identified, said.
The victim’s face was left beaten and battered.
According to the victim, the man who attacked him Saturday afternoon told him, “I hate the Jews. I want to kill you now.”
Police confirmed that the attack was reported around 1:30 p.m. that day along the 6400 block of Northwest 44th Street.
The victim says he is still living in fear after being attacked and beaten for simply being Jewish.
The victim is a rabbi, who is about to turn 69 years old.
He said he was walking home from synagogue when the attack took place.
That’s when good Samaritan Anwar Espinosa saw the beating and turned around to help after hearing the suspect scream racially charged comments at the victim.
“He was hitting him so bad and I was thinking that man is killing him,” Espinosa said. “I heard him screaming like ‘I’m tired of you guys’ so I had to do something. I just turned around and went back and helped.”'
Despite the attack, the rabbi is still finding a way to shine some light on a dark situation.
“We have to find a way to give love, even to the people who hate us,” he said. “We have to work on that.”
Lauderhill police have since arrested the suspect in the case, identified as 42-year-old Trevor Rodney.
“We hope this is going to be a sign for all of us, and even for the community where we live here now, and we have to have peace of mind,” the victim said.
The outside of the Lauderhill synagogue near where the victim was attacked includes a replica of the headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch in New York where Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, was the spiritual leader.
He passed in 1994, but the victim believes the Rebbe was protecting him.
“Thank God I’m OK. Things could be much worse,” he said. “This guy is almost willing to kill me because I’m Jewish -- not because of something else -- only because I’m Jewish.”