Van carrying Skulener Rebbe runs over police officer

More than 100,000 people crowded the Brooklyn streets between 52nd to 61st Streets and 12th to 16th Avenues.

By YVETTE J. DEANE
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Two NYPD officers were injured during the funeral procession of the Skulener Rebbe, the rabbi of the Skulen Hasidic dynasty, according to the Jewish Press on Wednesday.
One officer's leg was run over by the van carrying the late rabbi, when the police were trying to manage the crowd, according to various news sources. The other officer was hit by a drone that “apparently ran out of gas and dropped out of the sky" hitting the officer in the head, the Jewish Press reported.
According to ABC Eyewitness News 7, 36-year-old Yehiel Rosenfeld, who owns the drone, was charged with reckless endangerment.
More than 100,000 people crowded the Brooklyn streets between 52nd to 61st Streets and 12th to 16th Avenues.
The Skulener Rebbe, Rabbi Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, 95, passed away on Tuesday and was the last Holocaust-Era Rebbe of the sect, according to the Forward. According to the report, Sculeni, Moldova before the WWII. They spent the duration of the war in the Ukrainian city of Chernowitz, oppressed by the Germans and later the Soviets. The two traveled to Bucharest, Romania to care for Jewish orphans after the war, but were arrested in 1958 for treason. United Nations official intervened and released the two rabbis, giving them US citizenship, and arriving in the states in August 1960, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
Portugal was known for his strong opposition to Internet use, and was even one of the organizers of the Orthodox rally against the Internet in 2013 at Citi Field, the Forward reported. Portugal even set fire to a TV at the eve of Passover along with any leaven bread that had to be destroyed before the holiday, according to the report.
The rebbe was also well known for composing tunes, a Jewish religious tune sometimes including verse from the Bible of Psalms. He was known to carry a tape recorder to capture melodies, according to the Jewish Week.