Aged Couple Were Beaten on a Street of Strangers

It is like scores of other neighborhoods in the city that slid into decline after the earlier residents moved on – nobody pays attention to them until something brutally startling happens. Except for scattered enclaves of brownstone revival, much of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights – an area to the northwest of Crown Heights – was slipping away until an aged couple were severely beaten in their home at 867 Pacific Street earlier this month.

The wife, Ida H died Sunday of injuries suffered in the beating. Her husband remains in critical condition in Brookly Hospital.

Sam Milton, a black man who with his wife, Gladys, has rented the top floor of the Hochman’s three-story red brick building for 5 years, said he had never really talked to the Hochmans. “They’re Jewish,” Mr. Milton said as he stood in the doorway, “and I wouldn’t know what they are talking about anyway.”

“It’s become a way of life in this jungle that is New York,” said Rabbi Norman Zdanowitz.

excerpt NYT 3/16/77 David Bird