Hate-crime talk is 'ridiculous,' says one of accused Chanukah Q train attackers

[Trainspotter]

Hate-crime talk is 'ridiculous,' says one of accused Chanukah Q train attackers

BY MELISSA GRACE, OREN YANIV, SCOTT SHIFREL and JONATHAN LEMIRE

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Wednesday, December 12th 2007, 4:00 AM

 

[float=right]

Joseph Jirovec holds a gun on Kimberly

Babajko in MySpace picture. Both are

charged in vicious attack on Q train.

[/float]The group of thugs - including the son of a city firefighter - accused of savagely attacking straphangers celebrating Chanukah appears to revel in recklessness.

 

Photos from the suspects' Facebook and MySpace Web pages show the pals making a mockery of violence.

 

In one picture, Joseph Jirovec - who is to start six months in jail in January for a 2006 hate crime - is pointing a weapon at the head of his friend Kimberly Babajko.

 

In another, the 19-year-old Babajko is the one playing with the handgun, and in a third, she is shown provocatively posing in lingerie.

 

In a fourth, she looks almost like someone else as she poses demurely in what looks like a floor-length prom dress. In many photos, the group flashes gang signs or their middle fingers.

 

Jirovec, Babajko and most of the others were charged with assault. The gang could face hate crime charges stemming from the Friday night fight on the Qtrain, but Jirovec denied it was anti-Semitic, saying his mother is Jewish. "We didn't even know they were Jewish at the time," said Jirovec, 19, who took prosecutors' plea deal in September in exchange for admitting he assaulted two black men in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn.

 

"The whole hate-crime talk is ridiculous," said Jirovec, who claimed two of the friends arrested with him are Jewish.

 

[float=right]

Babajko (l.) also wields a gun.

[/float]Ten people - eight men and two women - were arrested after the melee and charged with a slew of misdemeanors, including assault, menacing and inciting a riot. All were released without bail.

 

Cops are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, though no bias charges have been filed.

 

The three friends who suffered multiple bruises and cuts allegedly at the hands of Jirovec and his group have no doubts the attack was religiously motivated.

 

"They said, 'You dirty Jews, you killed Jesus on Chanukah, you should all die,'" said Maria Parsheva, 23, a Baruch College student.

 

Parsheva said she and her boyfriend, Walter Adler, also 23, are half-Jewish and were celebrating Chanukah at a Manhattan bar with Angelica Krischanvich, 21, and Nick Rosenbaum.

 

They carried a menorah and dreidels as they boarded the Qtrain at Canal St. bound for Brooklyn, Parsheva said.

 

On the train, they said Jirovec, Babajko and their friends loudly yelled "Merry Christmas" - and became infuriated when Krischanvich responded, "Happy Chanukah."

 

"[One woman said,] 'You can't say that, we are Catholic,'" said Krischanvich, a Hunter College student who is not Jewish. "That's when two guys stood up and showed us their Jesus tattoos," she said. "They started yelling at us and telling us we have no savior."

 

Photo Gallery: NY Daily News - December 12, 2007

[Eastman346]

more wannabe thugs who cares! these kids should be in school doing school work.

[R1Toasty]

How about we just be nice and stop hating people... god forbid we be offended by anything. I look at it as a different view, and these people obviously do not. Be a little open minded, that's all.

[DOB2RTO]

How about we just be nice and stop hating people... god forbid we be offended by anything. I look at it as a different view, and these people obviously do not. Be a little open minded, that's all.

 

I still don't understand why in this day in age, are people still being hateful among different ethnicities, within their own race.