A Brooklyn Heights apartment building where a Columbia University executive lives was defaced with red paint by pro-Palestinian protestors Thursday morning, police said.
The activists also claimed they released live crickets inside the building where Columbia University Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway.
Police were called to the building on Orange St. near Hicks St. at about 7 a.m. The vandals are believed to have struck hours earlier, police said. They painted inverted triangles on the building, which Jewish advocates say are “symbols used by terrorists to mark targets they want to take out.”
They also plastered the block with leaflets blaming Holloway for the arrests of pro-Palestinian students and activists who took over parts of Columbia University’s campus.
“Did you enjoy our present? Did it make you uncomfortable?” one leaflet read.
“Whatever you felt was incomparable to the pain you made Columbia students feel when you signed off on their brutalization because they stood against the genocide of Palestinians.”
Cops are still investigating a series of June 12 red paint incidents sparked by tensions over the war between Hamas and Israel, with vandals in those incidents targeting some officials from the Brooklyn Museum. The vandalism was spurred by opposition to the museum’s investment in companies with ties to the Israeli military.
Videographer Samuel Seligson was charged Tuesday with criminal mischief as a hate crime for being at a June 12 protest where six dissenters splashed red paint outside a Hicks St. building in Brooklyn Heights where Brooklyn Museum Executive Director Anne Pasternak lives, police said.
Seligson’s lawyer, Leena Widdi, railed at the criminal charges, calling them an “appalling” overreach since Seligson didn’t take part in the destruction.
On Aug. 1, cops arrested Taylor Pelton, 28, after identifying her as one of the vandals. She too was charged with criminal mischief as a hate crime.
Vandals also painted inverted red triangles on the doors of Pasternak’s building.
The same day, a home on Douglass St. in Boerum Hill — where a museum board member lives — was also splashed with paint.
Police later released surveillance footage of the suspects and classified the incidents as hate crimes.
Video of the unfolding damage was posted to the Instagram account for A15 Actions, an international group of activists whose goal is to disrupt economies they view as participating in the bloodshed in Gaza.
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