New City, USA - A guilty plea has averted a trial in an attempted-murder case that brought unusual attention to a religious dispute in a Jewish enclave in New York.
Defense attorney Deborah Lowenberg says Shaul Spitzer pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree assault. The 18-year-old is a member of a Hasidic sect in New Square.
Spitzer had been accused of severely burning a neighbor, Aron Rottenberg, with a firebomb.
Rottenberg claimed Spitzer was acting at the direction of the village's chief rabbi because Rottenberg had stopped praying at the main synagogue.
The rabbi denied involvement.
Lowenberg says Spitzer could be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
New Square is about 30 miles north of Manhattan. The insular village has 7,000 residents, nearly all of them members of the Skver (skvehr) Hasidic sect.