This from NY1:

15 years ago Saturday that rioting broke out in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Back in 1991, 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car driven by a Hasidic man.

The incident sparked three days of riots. Close to 200 people were injured during the turmoil.

Lemrick Nelson was convicted of inciting the riots that led to the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum.

Nelson was released in 2005 after serving a ten-year federal sentence.

For a fascinating and well-rounded treatment of this event, take this DVD out of the library and watch AnnA Deavere Smith’s one-woman show based on verbatim excerpts from interviews she conducted in Brooklyn.

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH: FIRES IN THE MIRROR (video; 90 minutes) 1993

One woman play conceived, written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith, based on her stage play. Directed by George C. Wolfe

A mix of art and journalism. The work is built on Smith’s verbatim excerpts of interviews she conducted with victims and eyewitnesses of the events, and adversaries and advocates of the issues that swirl around the 1991 conflicts that took place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Anna Deavere Smith portrays all of these interviews, becoming nearly 30 characters.

"My goal is to create with the audience a state of `we,’ (Deavere) said in a telephone interview from her San Francisco apartment. "One thing live theater can and must do is to create communities that will not exist otherwise. It can put people together that ordinarily wouldn’t be found sitting next to each other. What’s valuable is for me to present people who have a very large will to communicate, a will that’s larger than the wall between us.

"If we are going to realize `We the People,’ we have to find out who `we’ are, she continued. "It’s crucial that we have a responsible American public, and to achieve that, more people have to be heard and more people have to be given the skills to speak." Smith quoted in the Oakland Tribune, 1/9/94