Brooklyn, NY – After Coming Together for a Frantic Search, a Community Is Left Reeling

Brooklyn, NY – When day broke on Wednesday in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the swarms of volunteers went home defeated, and the detritus of a frantic 36-hour search for a missing boy lay strewn by the curb.

There were plastic water jugs, napkins and fliers outside the brick apartment building where Leiby Kletzky and his family lived on 15th Avenue, in the heart of the Hasidic neighborhood.

Badana Gertz, a woman in her 60s, came from Flatbush to pick up the pieces of garbage by hand before the city cleaners arrived.

“At least I feel like I was able to do something besides pray and pray and pray,” Ms. Gertz said.

After an exhaustive block-by-block search that drew thousands of volunteers — not only from Borough Park but also from Jewish enclaves in Queens, Boston, the Catskills and Monsey, N.Y. — news that the boy had been killed left the neighborhood devastated.

“It’s gruesome, it’s an absolute horror, really, it can make you sick,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind. He said he had never seen such a profound community response or a crime so extreme in the 29 years he has represented Borough Park.

The neighborhood is one of the safest in the city, one in which some parents feel secure enough to let their children walk unaccompanied by an adult, though they often move in groups with siblings or other children. As in other Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like Crown Heights and Williamsburg, families tend to be large — Leiby had four sisters — and so children are everywhere.

The community has a safety patrol, called the Shomrim, to complement the police from the 66th Precinct. There is also a well-established wariness of outsiders, a survival tactic that the Bobov Hasidim, the neighborhood’s dominant sect, brought over from Poland after barely escaping extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

The suspect, Levi Aron, picked up Leiby on the street in Borough Park on Monday after the boy got lost while walking from day camp to meet his parents, the police said. Mr. Aron’s apartment, where parts of the boy’s body were found, is in neighboring Kensington.

One mother who gave only her first name, Esther, said she had tried to reassure her seven children. “I told my kids, it didn’t happen in Borough Park, it happened far away, so they shouldn’t be scared,” she said. “It’s not a thing that happens every day.”

Some residents acknowledged being shaken by the knowledge that a Jewish man had been arrested for the murder.

“In the end to find out he’s Jewish really hurts,” said Barry Fink, a 25-year-old father of two who had volunteered overnight in the search for the boy. “It puts a stain on the Jewish community.”

Mr. Hikind was frank about the suspect’s religion. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed, nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “We’re wonderful and fabulous; we showed it the last two days what an incredible community this is. I don’t know if you could match this anywhere else, anywhere, the dedication and devotion.”

“But you know what,” he said, nodding, “it was one of our people who committed this dastardly crime.”

The community took some solace on Wednesday in the enormous outpouring of support that had transformed Borough Park for two days. A group of 20 Pakistanis had even joined in the search, Mr. Hikind said.

“The way we came together from all over the boroughs, the unity of each and every one of us, disregarding if we were Orthodox, all kinds of sects, it was unprecedented,” Motty Jay, 29, said.

Still, the killing had many parents feeling that their sense of safety was now compromised.

A 28-year-old man named Shulem, who has four children and lives on 52nd Street, said he had a camera in front of his door so he could let his children play outside. He sometimes stepped away, he said, but now, “we’ll watch them more.”

Esther, whose 11-year-old son attends the same day camp that Leiby did, said she would no longer let him walk home alone.

“Now he has to go on the bus,” she said.

A mother of nine, who would not give her name, stood on the street in front of her apartment building, crying about what had happened and the questions she was now asking herself.

“I don’t think it’s healthy to live with fear,” the woman, 50, said. “Is that what God wants from us?”

At Yeshiva Boyan Tiferes Mordechai Shlomo, the school and day camp Leiby attended, bereavement counselors were brought in. Late in the afternoon, children slowly emerged from the school, in a four-story brick building, and were ushered onto private yellow buses by staff members. Yehuda Berkowitz, the head counselor, said no children had been allowed to walk home alone on Wednesday.

One young child repeatedly asked his mother, who had come to pick him up: “Did they find him yet? Did they find him yet?” He was still asking the question as they disappeared behind the school buses.

Pulled aside, the woman, who said that her name was Rachel R. and that her children were 7, 8 and 9, was asked if she planned to answer her son’s question.

“Should I tell them the truth? No!” she said, her eyes widening. “A child that age couldn’t accept it. Some form of the truth, but not all of the truth. I want them to be normal one day, normal adults.”