Oniel Gilbourne was arrested in September after allegedly beating a 64-year-old Hasidic rabbi with a paving stone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. While the community wondered aloud what was in Gilbourne’s mind, he likely heard a drumbeat of acronyms — MMPI-2, MCMI-II, WAIS-R — representing some tests used to assess mental illness.
Violent attacks on the visibly Orthodox have become a disturbing pattern in Crown Heights, a neighborhood that not only has a high concentration of Hasidic Jews, but also a sky-high rate of mental illness compared to the city as a whole, along with a recent influx of homeless shelters.
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