Teen admits vandalizing Jewish cemetery
A Warwick teenager admitted in court Wednesday that he spraypainted swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery in the Orange County village of Florida, according to the county district attorney.
Eric Carbonaro, 18, pleaded guilty in County Court to the felonies of conspiracy as a hate crime and tampering with physical evidence in connection with the vandalism at the Beth Shalom Cemetery that occurred during the overnight hours of Oct. 8 and 9, 2016, District Attorney David M. Hoovler said in a press release.
The graffiti, on stone walls and headstones, included swastikas, the words “Heil Hitler” and the Nazi SS symbol.
Hoovler said his office will recommend a sentence “that includes incarceration . ... It is our view that this was not simply a youthful indiscretion, but rather a premeditated hate crime.”
In court Wednesday, Carbonaro admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to damage property at the cemetery by spray-painting anti-Semitic words and symbols and conspiring to destroy evidence of the crime by deleting images and other information from cell phones belonging to two unnamed co-conspirators, Hoovler said.
Carbonaro also admitted to asking his co-conspirators to change their testimony relating to the investigation, the prosecutor said. Additionally, Hoovler said, Carbonaro told the court his actiosn were driven by his beliefs or perceptions about the ancestry and religion of people buried in the cemetery.
Carbonaro was indicted for the crimes by an Orange County grand jury in October 2017 .
On Oct. 23, 2016, two weeks after the cemetery vandalism, Fallsburg police, in neighboring Sullivan County, said they were investigating vandalism at Jewish-owned stores in Woodbourne, Woodridge and South Fallsburg.
All three businesses sustained broken or damaged windows, believed to have been caused by a BB gun or some other weapon.