The Murder of Yong Xin Huang

Yong Xin Huang.

CAAAV Digital Archive

Yong Xin Huang, a 16-year-old boy, was hanging out with his friends on the morning of March 24, 1995, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

A neighbor called 911, reporting that the teens were playing with a gun, which later was found to be a pellet gun. Police reports and statements from the Sheepshead Bay District Attorney’s office indicated that when officer Steven Mizrahi arrived at the scene, Huang refused to surrender his weapon. The two began fighting face-to-face. During the struggle, the officer’s gun accidentally discharged, fatally shooting at point-blank range in the back of the boy’s head.

Almost immediately, witness accounts contested the NYPD’s reports. One of Huang’s friends testified that the boys were shooting at garbage cans when the police arrived, and they immediately dropped the weapon when ordered. He also stated that Mizrahi shoved Huang so violently into a glass door it shattered. Representatives for Huang claim it would have been impossible for the young boy, who stood as 5’6 and weighed only 100lbs was incapable of fighting Mizrahi, who stood over 6 feet tall and weighed over 200lbs. A second autopsy ordered by the Huang family also indicated that the boy had his back to the officer, found that the bullet entered through the back of the boy’s head, with lacerations from glass were on the front of his head.

Huang was an honor student at Robert Wagner Junior High School. The ninth-grader just received a Merit Scholar Award and was enrolled in weekend classes to study for upcoming high school admissions tests, where he hoped to attend Stuyvesant High School. Yong Xin was “the son of a working-class immigrant family, with a mother who is a garment worker, the father a restaurant worker, three older sisters who went straight to work after high school to support the family, and all of whom had invested their hopes and dreams of upward mobility in their youngest and only son, now deceased.” [1]

CAAAV organized within days of the murder with other community leaders, calling for the immediate suspension of Mizrahi, who was placed on paid sick leave. CAAAV worked closely with the Huang family to help file a lawsuit against the New York Police Department, seeking "unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, the suit asserts that the youth's constitutional rights were violated."[2]

“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?”

Takeover of Brooklyn DA Office
CAAAV Digital Archive 

(Left)Members of CAAAV and the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR) protest outside of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes's office on March 13, 1996. The groups demanded indictments against two officers, including Mizrahi, who had been cleared of their charges. After a dramatic three-hour sit-in, Hynes called in officers in riot gear to arrest protestors, including Huang's sisters.