A man approached three Jewish men on a street in East Haven, Conn., and yelled antisemitic slurs at them. Smelling of alcohol, he shouted “get out of my city,” “baby killers” and “go back where you belong,” also asking if they liked “genocide,” according to the victims. Police also alleged that he shoved “a fourth person, who was trying to intervene, threw a rolled-up newspaper at them, then pointed at the yarmulke one of the victims was wearing and slapped it off his head, causing it to fall on the ground.”

The incident took place on Crown Street.

The victims helped the New Haven Police Department identify the perpetrator, 36-year-old Paul Smith of East Haven. After confirming the victims’ accounts with video footage, police arrested the assailant Monday and charged him with intimidation due to bias in the second degree and disorderly conduct.

“This behavior will never be tolerated in New Haven,” said David Zannelli, chief of the New Haven Police Department.

Rabbi Meir Posner, the director of Chabad at Yale, who was one of the victims, said in an interview with the New Haven Independent that he had been walking with a recent Yale graduate when they ran into a third man, another Chabad community member, and stopped to chat. He said that a loud and aggressive man approached them and started yelling abuse, egged on by two people who had accompanied him.

“It was very clearly directed at us,” he said, since both he and one of the other men wore a yarmulke and tzitzit.

“I think New Haven is a great city,” Posner said, praising the police for their rapid and successful intervention. “I think that Yale is a great place with great people as well,” and the incident marks “a dark moment in an otherwise bright city.” 

“It is disturbing that there are people that feel the need to express themselves in that way and that harbor such feelings,” he added. “There was nothing rational or reasonable about this person’s behavior,” nor of the other two “instigators.”

“It makes me feel like the best response is to respond with irrational kindness and goodness, in the same way that hate can be irrational,” the rabbi concluded.

In a post on X, the ADL warned that this incident did not take place in isolation.

“This is not an isolated incident,” the group wrote. “Our latest audit recorded 203 physical assaults against Jews in 2025, the highest number ever recorded since ADL began tracking in 1979. Those responsible must be held accountable.”