Hate crime charge in cemetery vandalism
An Orange County grand jury has indicted a Warwick teenager for a hate crime for vandalism at a Jewish cemetery, District Attorney David M. Hoovler said Monday.
Eric Carbanaro, 18, was indicted Monday on two felony counts of tampering with physical evidence and with the felony of conspiracy as a hate crime, according to a press release from Hoovler’s office.
The charges stem from an investigation into the spray-painting of anti-Semitic graffiti at the Beth Shalom Cemetery in the Orange County village of Florida on Oct. 9, 2016. The village is within the town of Warwick.
The vandalism included swastikas, the words “Heil Hitler” and Nazi “SS” symbols on walls and headstones in the cemetery.
The indictment alleges Carbanaro took part in a conspiracy to damage property at the cemetery by spray-painting the antiSemitic symbols and messages, and acted in concert with others to destroy evidence of that crime by deleting images and other information pertaining to desecration of the cemetery from cell phones belonging to two other coconspirators, the press release said.
The indictment alleges that between Oct. 9, 2016, and June 19, 2017, one of the coconspirators, while at Carbanaro’s home, deleted a meme with the words “Secretly spray paints Jewish cemetery and gets away with it,” according to Hoovler.
Monday’s announcement of the indictment did not identify the alleged coconspirators.
“There is no room for this type of hateful desecration of religious property here in Orange County,” Hoovler said in his press release. “These anti-Semitic symbols and messages do not reflect the values of the overwhelming majority of Orange County and Warwick residents.”
On Oct. 23, 2016, two weeks after the cemetery vandalism, Fallsburg police said they were investigating three cases of vandalism at Jewish-owned stores in Woodbourne, Woodridge and South Fallsburg, all of which are in neighboring Sullivan County.
All three businesses sustained broken or damaged windows, believed to have been caused by a BB gun or some other weapon.