Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

 

Luke Schreiner is charged with a hate crime attack on black postal worker Rene Isidore. In Gerritsen Beach last November, he allegedly berated the victim with a torrent of racial epithets, slapped him in the face and snapped his sunglasses in half.

A Brooklyn judge is weighing whether a 300-pound New York City firefighter is a racist brute or merely a bully.

Luke Schreiner, 50, is charged with a hate crime attack on black postal worker Rene Isidore. In Gerritsen Beach last November, he allegedly berated the victim with a torrent of racial epithets, slapped him in the face and snapped his sunglasses in half.

Schreiner, who strongly resembles bald boxer Butterbean, could face up to four years in prison if he’s convicted by Judge John Ingram, who is presiding over a nonjury trial.

Defense lawyer Robert Gallo argued that the incident was road rage, not racism.

“This has nothing to do with race,” Gallo said in his opening statement Tuesday. “He would have acted the same if Mr. Isidore was white, black, Asian or green.”

“If he said the ‘N’ word it’s reprehensible … but the totality of the circumstances support fully that it was a traffic dispute,” Gallo said.

Isidore, a mild-mannered mail carrier, broke down in tears and needed a brief recess to compose himself as he began to describe how the Nov. 13, 2013, incident allegedly began over nothing.

He said he was a car length behind Schreiner’s stopped pickup truck in the middle of a one-way street. Isidore said he did not honk his horn, but drove around the truck instead.

“I don’t think it’s professional to be driving this government vehicle and constantly honking the horn,” Isidore, 57, told Assistant District Attorney Damani Sims.

 

Source:  WBLS