City reaches $1.25M settlement with family of Crown Heights victim

Admitting that the hospital that treated Yankel Rosenbaum 14 years ago made errors, the city on Friday reached a $1.25-million settlement with the family of the slain doctoral student.

The negotiated settlement was announced Friday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where a jury was deliberating a $10-million malpractice lawsuit brought by the family shortly after Rosenbaum’s death in 1991.

The Rosenbaum family, which could not be reached for comment, had recently declined a city offer to settle the case for $1 million because city officials would not admit that Kings County Hospital had botched Rosenbaum’s care.

Rosenbaum was stabbed four times by Lemrick Nelson on Aug. 20, 1991, during a race riot in Crown Heights that erupted after a Hasidic driver accidentally struck and killed Gavin Cato, 7, an African-American boy.

Rosenbaum, who had been chased down and beaten by an angry mob, was taken to the emergency trauma center at Kings County, where he later died. A state report concluded that he probably would not have died if he had been treated properly at the hospital, where the staff missed a stab wound.

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corp., in a statement released Friday, admitted that the hospital had made a mistake.

“The violence in Crown Heights in August 1991, constituted a sad chapter in the city’s history as well as a personal tragedy for the family of Yankel Rosembaum,” it said.

“Kings County Hospital recognizes that diagnostic and treatment errors made during the emergency room care provided to Yankel Rosenbaum in the hours after his stabbing played a role in his death,” the statement said.

HHC said the hospital has since instituted “significant reforms that have enhanced and improved patient care.”

Nelson was acquitted of murder in 1992, but in a federal civil rights case sought by the family, was convicted and sentenced to 19 years’ imprisonment in 1997. That conviction was overturned in 2002. A year later, another jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 10 years, most of which had already been served. Nelson was released from prison last year.