STORY UPDATED: Rainbow Apparel Company’s Gabriel A. Chehebar was arrested in Brooklyn last night on charges that he assaulted his 11-year-old son.
According to the New York Post, the police were called by the 11-year-old boy’s mother to respond to allegations that Chehebar had repeatedly hit the boy on the head during time spent together. Chehebar was charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17 and assault, according to the Post. He is due to appear in court today.
Chehebar is listed by Bloomberg as the director of the Caribbean region for Rainbow Apparel, the Chehebar’s long-standing family retail chain with 1,300 stores across the country.
According to company spokesperson Josh Nass, Chehebar does not hold a senior role at Rainbow.
“That’s the work he’s engaged in but he does not play any sort of senior role in the company,” said Nass. “He is one of many thousands of employees.”
The Chehebars are among a contingent of Syrian Jewish real estate families that collectively own about one-third of the real estate in the Jersey Shore hamlet of Deal, New Jersey, as The Real Deal reported in 2015, and are active in retail real estate in New York City and nationally. A branch of the Chehebar family owns the real estate development firm the Jackson Group, but Gabriel A. Chehebar is not involved with that company. — Erin Hudson
NOTE: This story was updated on March 4, 2018 at 2:10 p.m. to include comment from Rainbow Apparel Company.