An 11-year-old girl is being credited for being the key factor in leading the NYPD to arrest the boy, who is also 11 years old, for setting ablaze a Jewish school bus Sunday night in Crown Heights, her father Israel Gansburg exclusively told JP.

Shiena Gansburg was walking home from the supermarket Sunday afternoon when she passed 509 Brooklyn Avenue, and saw the group of teens playing at the bus with cardboard boxes and staring a fire, her father said. She took a quick but good look and ran to her house which is nearby and told her father what she saw.

Her father and her older brother ran out to Brooklyn Avenue and saw smoke coming from the bus.

“My 18-year-old son called 911, and I called shomrim,” the father recalled.

Police and shomrim quickly arrived at the scene and started an investigation. Based on the description she gave for shomrim, units started canvassing the area. Five minutes later two shomrim members observed the teens, who matched the description, walking at East New York and New York Avenue, Shomrim coordinator Mendy Hershkop, who was the first unit to respond to the fire, told JP.

“We called up the police and told him that we see the group who may be responsible for the fire, police officers responded to the scene and stopped the group,” Hershkop said.

The 11-year-old girl then positively identified the 11-year-old youth as being one of the teens who set the bus on fire.

“She was definitely the key in leading to his arrest,” Hershkup said. “She acted better than most adults would act in such a situation.”

“It’s just shocking that this could happen in Crown Heights, Gansburg said. I have been living in Crown Heights for 20 years and never experienced something like that. When I saw the bus on fire it looked to me like I’m in Israel,” Gansburg told JP. “My daughter couldn’t believe what she witnessed he said, she couldn’t digest it.”

At a unrelated press conference Tuesday afternoon outside NYPD headquarters the NYPD chief of detectives said this incident was clearly a hate crime.

“It was a religious school bus, everybody in the community knows that this kind of yellow bus is being used for religious schools,” Boyce explained, adding that police are looking to arrest five other men in connection.

The Boy identified by law enforcement sources  as Calvin Payne, was charged with Arson as hate crime and criminal mischief as hate crime , the other suspects are expected to face similar charges, the sources said.

New York Fire Department marshals along with the NYPD arson squad are still investigating how the youths started the fire, but they do know that there were five fire points on the bus, and that some of the children put boxes in the front of the bus while some put them in the back, and others in the middle, officials said.