1990 SPECIAL REPORT

Yusuf Kirriem Hawkins (also spelled as Yusuf Hawkins, March 19, 1973 August 23, 1989) was a 16yearold black teenager who was shot to death on August 23, 1989, in Bensonhurst, a predominantly ItalianAmerican workingclass neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Hawkins and three friends were attacked by a crowd of 10 to 30 white youths, with at least seven of them wielding baseball bats. One, armed with a handgun, shot Hawkins twice in the chest, killing him.