|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Chabad House in Cape Coral, Florida was vandalized on Saturday by an assailant who tried to break in with a brick during Shabbat services.
ALERT Cape Coral, FL – Chabad Jewish Center attempted break in Saturday March 11th Shabbat mid day
Description: white male, bald, 40-50 driving a Ford SUV (gold)
Menorah kicked down, bricks thrown at door and Rabbi’s car, main door lock destroyed
Tips? Call 800.780.8477 pic.twitter.com/9JzmWP2O7p
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) March 13, 2023
The synagogue’s Rabbi Yossi Labkowski described the vandal as an “angry man.”
The incident began around 1 p.m.
“Then we hear this loud noise,” he told NBC2. “I was approaching the door and I see somebody picking up a brick and just yanking it, throwing it at the door.”
The assailant, described by congregants as a bald white male in his 40s or 50s, driving a gold Ford SUV, threw the brick multiple times at the center’s front door. Prior to trying to break the door down, he vandalized a painting of a menorah in the parking lot.
When he realized he wasn’t going to be able to get through the door, which contained impact-resistant glass, he used bricks to smash the windshield and the passenger door of the rabbi’s car in the parking lot.
“It’s only a car. That can be replaced. Thank G-d nobody was injured and nobody got hurt,” Rabbi Labkowski said.
“This person wanted to get in. He was angry,” he added. “For some reason wanted to get in and who knows, he could’ve been armed.”
Rabbi Labkowski described it as a hate crime.
“The fact that he knocked down the menorah first and then he came to this door. He could’ve went to any other business, he came to this door. We don’t live in fear. We are here and we will continue our work and if we have to protect ourselves, we will protect ourselves,” he said.
Cape Coral police have opened an investigation, including collecting the bricks the man used during the incident. They are actively searching for him, according to Fox4.
