Three Convicted in Lakewood Attacks

Lakewood, New Jersey: Three Lakewood men have been indicted on charges of a hate crime on two frum men in connection with attacks and robberies of the two in separate incidents. In the 13-count indictment handed up by an Ocean County grand jury, Devon Hardy, 20, is charged with the attempted murder of Rabbi Yaakov Goldbaum. Police say that Rabbi Goldbaum was attacked from behind and mugged. He was critically injured, bleeding from an abdominal wound, when his wife called for help, outside his home in Lakewood, at about 1:00AM on July 8. The indictment also charges Hardy, Jose Diaz, 42, and Timothy Swift, 18, all of Lakewood, with first-degree robbery with a knife and first-degree bias intimidation during the attacks. Hardy and Diaz are also named in the indictment in connection with an attack on Dovid Davidovish, who was visiting from Eretz Yisroel at the time, he was in his car in the parking lot of a Route 9 convenience store in Lakewood on May 25 when they struck the windshield with a baseball bat. He suffered minor injuries. The windshield was broken, and a laptop was taken from his car. Hardy and Diaz are charged in the attack with first-degree robbery, first-degree bias intimidation, third-degree aggravated assault, possession of a weapon — a baseball bat — for an unlawful purpose and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.