Yong Xin Huang’s Senseless Murder
16-year-old Yong Xin Huang never lived to tell the tale of his fateful encounter with the NYPD. Around 9:30 am on the morning of March 24, 1995, Huang was shooting an authentic-looking pellet gun at trees and garbage cans from the driveway of his friend's Sheepshead Bay home in Brooklyn when a neighbor became alarmed and called 911. The sequence of events that followed the arrival of NYPD Officer Steven Mizrahi and his partner, Noel Waters, quickly ended in tragedy.
According to official police reports, Officer Mizrahi caught sight of what he believed to be a real pistol in the teen’s right hand and ordered him to drop it. Huang, either due to intense panic or fearlessness, did not respond to the order and retained hold of the gun. A fierce face-to-face struggle ensued with Mizrahi using his left hand to try and wrestle the gun from Huang. In the process, Mizrahi lost his balance and fell into the glass storm door in the home’s backyard. Upon regaining his balance, Mizrahi tried again to loosen Huang’s grip on the gun with his left hand, when, with his right hand, he accidentally discharged his own gun at close range, wounding Huang beyond recovery [1].
Yong Xin Huang
CAAAV Digital Archive
This version of the narrative was quickly contradicted by eyewitness accounts. Huang’s friend, who spoke to reporters the night of the shooting on the condition of anonymity, recounted that Huang had not attempted to resist the police, a statement that makes sense given the vast differences in their heights and weights. Standing at only 5 feet 6 and 100 lbs, Huang would have been nearly incapable of fighting Mizrahi, who clocked in at 6 feet tall and 200 lbs. “My friend was standing about a foot from me… He couldn’t move. It was just impossible to imagine that he even tried to move” [2].
Despite complying with the police’s order to drop the pellet gun, Mizrahi approached the unarmed teen as he turned his back to enter the house through the glass door. Mizrahi, with his gun still drawn, grabbed Huang and proceeded to smash his face against the door, shattering the glass. Aimed at Huang’s head, the gun discharged, dealing the fatal blow. Two autopsies, one conducted by the New York City Medical Examiner and an independent one commissioned by the family, confirmed that Huang was shot in the back of the head behind his left ear at point-blank range with a Glock 9-mm semi-automatic, suggesting that Huang was indeed facing away from Mizrahi when he was killed [3].
In the wake of the shooting—which garnered national attention—the media, encouraged by the police, searched for evidence that would justify the excessive force shown, seeking to invoke the common trope of urban youth criminality to discredit Huang’s character and innocence. Why had he not been in school on a Friday? Did the toy gun resemble a real one? What was he really doing with it? Their discoveries led them to the portrait of an upstanding teen seeking to create a better life for himself and his immigrant working-class family who “had invested their hopes and dreams of upward mobility” in his success [4]. Huang, the youngest of four and his parents only son, immigrated at the age of seven in 1986 from Taishan, China to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was an honors eighth-grade student at Robert F. Wagner Junior High School, which he still attended due to being placed a few years behind where he should have been after moving to the United States [5]. Unable to criminalize Huang, the media wielded the myth of the model minority to instead paint the teen as an example of a law-abiding Asian immigrant whose murder was an “aberration,” one not meant to befall a good kid like him.
Protest sign against police brutality
CAAAV Digital Archive
Huang’s murder sparked immediate organizing by CAAAV as they called for the suspension of Mizrahi, who was out on paid sick leave, through a letter and petition campaign in the local community which received hundreds of signatures. With the support of Elizabeth OuYang, a lawyer with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Huang’s family filed a lawsuit with the NYPD seeking compensatory and punitive damages for their son whose constitutional rights had been violated. Huang’s older sisters, Joyce and Qing Lan Huang, became organizers themselves, channeling their grief to create long-lasting changes to New York’s police practices [6].
“My family cannot understand why [Yong Xin] was killed by a police officer who is supposed to save people’s lives. We want justice for the senseless murder of our brother… Does anyone understand the pain, hopelessness and anger our family feels?” [7].
CAAAV also fought to pressure the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to seek an indictment against Mizrahi for his role in the murder of Huang. Two months later, on May 17, their efforts failed when a grand jury voted not to indict Mizrahi, prompting Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes to not press any criminal charges against the officer. The grand jury concluded that Huang had the pellet gun in his hand and was struggling with the officer when the gun discharged, corroborating the official narrative established by the NYPD that Huang’s death, while tragic, had been accidental and an exception in a police force otherwise dedicated to protecting all members of the public equally. For Huang’s friends, family, and the larger Asian American community in New York, his murder was another example of a police system that viewed young persons of color as inherently criminal, only recognizing their humanity, if at all, after the damage was already done. Huang’s family was shocked and outraged by the decision and refused to back down in their fight for justice [8].
“We are very, very angry. We feel it is impossible. We want to know why the grand jury decided this way when two witnesses say Yong Xin did not struggle. We want to know if the D.A. did a good job. How could this be?” [9].
One week after the grand jury decision, on May 23, over 300 people attended a demonstration organized by CAAAV outside the Brooklyn DA’s office. Participants held signs with the phrases “Remember our brother” and “How many more children must die?” An attempt was made by a CAAAV delegation to deliver a community letter to the DA’s office but they were forcibly ejected from the premises by the police.
Protesters at the Brooklyn DA's office on May 23
CAAAV Digital Archive
These obstacles did nothing to deter the organization from its mission, with CAAAV forming an ad hoc committee to continue the campaign for justice. On July 16, the day before what would have been Huang’s 17th birthday, the committee organized a memorial service attended by more than 300 people at P.S. 124 in Chinatown. Family and classmates shared their memories of Huang and read poetry in his honor. After the service, there was a procession to Columbus Park where attendees created a memorial to Huang with his picture, white carnations, and ribbons. The day ended with a speak-out at Confucius Plaza where leaders in the Asian, African American, and Latino communities denounced police brutality and inaction by the District Attorneys of New York [10].
Childhood friends of Yong Xin Huang speaking at his memorial service
CAAAV Digital Archive
Tamina Davar, Yong Xin Huang's mother, and his sisters during memorial procession
CAAAV Digital Archive
Cardboard tombstones bearing the names of Asian Americans killed by police and gun violence at July 16 memorial
CAAAV Digital Archive
On October 10, CAAAV and five other community groups met with the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Zachary Carter, to demand he conduct a federal civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding Huang’s death. CAAAV’s ad hoc committee presented Carter with over 10,000 petition signatures and letters from 40 civil rights organizations supporting a federal investigation and a reexamination of the earlier grand jury procedures. They convinced Carter to reexamine transcripts from the grand jury hearing and to listen to evidence that was not previously presented to the jury by Hynes. While the meeting took place inside the courtroom, a group of 40 supporters joined Huang’s mother and three sisters in a candlelight vigil outside to protest systemic police brutality in New York and across the United States [11].
Efforts to hold Officer Mizrahi accountable continued throughout the following year. On March 13, 1996, twelve demonstrators took over Hynes’ office to demand justice for Huang and the shooting of unarmed Anibal Carrasquillo Jr. by NYPD Officer Marco Calderon, both of whom had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Demonstrators outside the sit-in included members of CAAAV and the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights joining forces to create an enormous multiracial crowd fighting in unison. After a three-hour standoff, Hynes called in officers in riot gear to arrest the demonstrators, which included Huang’s sisters, Joyce and Qing Lan, and Anibal’s mother, Milta Calderon. The twelve protesters were charged with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and obstructing governmental administration [12].
Takeover of Brooklyn DA's Office
CAAAV Digital Archive
As devastating as Huang’s story is, the activism that followed it remains a powerful example of the community care that emerged among New York’s immigrant and working-class families who sidestepped racial divisions to comfort and support one another amidst a climate of intense police violence. Iris Baez, the mother of Anthony Baez, killed by police three days before Christmas in 1994, began organizing for justice after his murder, joining forces with Margarita Rosario, the mother of Anthony Rosario and aunt of Hilton Vega, who were both fatally shot by officers on January 12, 1995, and the father of Nicholas Heyward Jr., a 13-year-old boy killed by a housing cop on September 27, 1994 while playing with a toy gun.
When the parents heard of a new case, they found the address of the family, offered consolation, and sought to bring them into the movement against police brutality. The activism they engaged in provided families a space to heal and work through their grief while fighting to change the system that had taken their relatives from them too soon. In the words of Qing Lan Huang: “We feel like we’re on the same boat. You feel like you’re not fighting alone” [13].
CAAAV continued to help foster multiracial family-driven efforts to oppose police violence as the 1990s progressed, forming part of a movement that fought to reclaim New York for poor and working-class people of color.
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[1] Dennis Hevesi, “No Indictment for Officer Who Shot Brooklyn Youth,” New York Times, May 17, 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/17/nyregion/no-indictment-for-officer-who-shot-brooklyn-youth.html.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Andrea McArdle and Tanya Ezren, “Police Brutality in the New Chinatown,” In Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City, (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 222.
[5] Chris Fuchs, “Decades After a Cop Shot Her Brother, Qinglan Huang Speaks Up for Akai Gurley,” NBC News, April 11, 2016. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/two-decades-after-cop-shot-her-brother-qing-lan-huang-n554146.
[6] Vivian Truong, “From State-Sanctioned Removal to the Right to the City: The Policing of Asian Immigrants in Southern Brooklyn, 1987-1995,” Journal of Asian American Studies, February 2020, 74.
[7] CAAAV, “Cop Bullet Ends Teen’s Life,” CAAAV Voice Newsletter, Spring 1995, 2.
[8] Hevesi, “No Indictment for Officer Who Shot Brooklyn Youth.”
[9] Ibid
[10] CAAAV, “Community Seeks Justice In Yong Xin Huang Killing,” CAAAV Voice Newsletter, Fall 1995, 1-2.
[11] Tomio Geron, “New York Story: Anti-Asian violence group wants new investigation into the killing of Yong Xin Huang; shades of Vincent Chin,” AsianWeek, October 13, 1995. http://www.nychinatown.org/articles/asianwk951013.html.
[12] CAAAV, “Protesters Takeover Brooklyn D.A.’s Office,” CAAAV Voice Newsletter, Summer 1996, 1-3.
[13] Truong, “From State-Sanctioned Removal to the Right to the City: The Policing of Asian Immigrants in Southern Brooklyn, 1987-1995,” 75.