Murder of Yusef Hawkins
Yusef Kirriem Hawkins (also spelled as Yusuf Hawkins, March 19, 1973 – August 23, 1989) was a 16-year-old Black teenager from the neighborhood of East New York, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, who was shot to death on August 23, 1989, in Bensonhurst, a predominantly Italian-American working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. Hawkins, his younger brother, and two friends were attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, with at least seven of them wielding baseball bats.