The troubled New Jersey man who allegedly rammed his car into an iconic Brooklyn synagogue suffered from mental illness and fixated on converting to Judaism before the crash — as police said Thursday he still face hate crime charges.
Dan Sohail, 36, had visited Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights several times as he spiraled into increasingly erratic behavior, including an angry confrontation at a Garden State yeshiva where he claimed that “God had sent him,” sources and police said.
But his seemingly sincere attempts to join the Jewish community, curdled into baffling violence Wednesday night when Sohail — wearing jean shorts and a zip-up sweater in the freezing weather — allegedly rammed the door at the 770 Eastern Parkway synagogue five times with his Honda.
Police charged Sohail with attempted assault, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment — all as hate crimes, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. Sohail was awaiting arraignment Thursday night.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked the Jewish institution,” Kenny said. “This is a synagogue, it is clearly marked as a synagogue. He knew it was a synagogue, he attended there previously. So, it’s a hate crime based on his attack of the Jewish synagogue.”
But many Chabad Lubavitch congregants viewed the crazed, caught-on-video crash not as antisemitism but as the act of a disturbed man drawn to the religious institution.
Even Kenny noted that video circulating online showed Sohail merrily dancing inside the headquarters roughly 10 days before the harrowing incident.
“Once again, too early to tell, but as you can see from the video that’s hitting social media, he seemed to be very at home with the Jewish community at the time he was attending that social gathering 10 days ago,” he said.
Neighbors and sources said Sohail acted increasingly manic and recently had been sleeping inside his car parked outside his mother’s Carteret, NJ, home.
Mendy Klein, 20, who regularly attends services at “770,” the World Headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, said he’d seen Sohail there two or three times.
“It’s kind of obvious that he’s not all there mentally, but he struck me as a nice guy who wanted to explore his Judaism,” Klein said.
“One time I saw him studying with someone here, and he seemed really into the lesson. It’s not an uncommon sight to witness here, so I didn’t really think anything of it,” he said.
“A lot of characters come and go here,” Klein noted. “Obviously in hindsight, he’s not someone you ideally want coming into 770, but this is a welcoming place. Thank God no one was hurt.”
Sohail’s seemingly sincere exploration of Judaism recently took him to Israel, from which he returned on Jan. 15, sources said.
Shortly after the trip, the eccentric religious seeker’s showed worrisome signs of declining mental health.
Neighbor Maria Carrillo, 36, who went to high school with Sohail, said he recently moved back into his mom’s house after moving out years ago — and a recent stint of sleeping in his car outside the home.
Start your day with all you need to know
Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.
Thanks for signing up!
Carrillo’s husband Luis Carrillo, 36, said Sohail never struck him as dangerous – more like a “West Coast pothead” – at least before he started talking to himself.
“He smokes a lot of weed. He always did,” Carrillo said. “And he took a while to answer your question like if you asked him something you could see him kind of processing it for a moment before he would say anything and it would come out really slow.”
On Monday, Maria Carillo spotted Sohail pacing disturbingly outside.
“He was pacing back and forth talking to himself like four or five times up and down the block,” she said. “I told my husband to keep an eye on him that something is wrong.”
Later that day, Sohail made an unnerving appearance at Yeshiva Gedola of Carteret, about a mile from his mom’s house.
“He made a statement that God had sent him,” Rabbi Eliyahu Teitz, 65, recalled to The Post on Thursday. “Then when he was asked to leave he became very angry.”
The irate Sohail then got his car stuck in the snow, prompting him to return to the school and pepper its hallways with curses, Teitz said.
Yeshiva students actually dug Sohail’s car out of the snow for him, the rabbi said.
“We didn’t make a big deal of it,” he said. “No police report. We didn’t identify him. It was an annoyance. It wasn’t anything other than an annoyance.”
Two days after the run-in, Sohail allegedly drove to Chabad Lubavitch, removed blockades, smashing his car through a driveway and then into the building.
“When he was removed from the car, he stated that his foot slipped, and during the briefing he stated that the reason he lost control of the car was because he was wearing clunky boots,” Kenny said.
Sohail’s mother Dorota Sohail angrily refused to comment when The Post reached her at home: “Get off my property.”
The accusations took Sohail’s father Sohail Majid, who divorced his mom eight years ago, by surprise.
“I’m shocked because it’s not a small thing — and we’ve never done anything in our life to hurt anyone, any religion or race,” he said.
“He was not religious at all — I just heard today he wanted to convert himself to Judaism.”
— Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton
