Biker caught on vid torching flag in Village
A bicycle-riding firebug was caught on video torching an American flag hanging on the front gate of an iconic Greenwich Village locksmith, cops said Tuesday.
The bespectacled arsonist (inset), who’s decked out in a maroon hoodie and black pants, was caught on two separate security cameras as he lit the flag outside Greenwich Locksmiths on Seventh Ave. near Commerce St. about 9:40 p.m., cops said. As the lower part of the flag caught fire, he pedaled away on his white bike, cops said.
“We’re a security business, so we have cameras,” said Philip Mortillaro, 69, who’s owned the shop since 1980. “So it was pretty stupid.”
Mortillaro’s store is just 125 square feet. In 2011, he completed a two-year project to decorate his store’s facade with patterns made from 10,000 keys.
The firebug tried to light the flag and failed, then came back and lit it a second time, Mortillaro said.
“He came back and lit it up again, a real piece of s—-for lack of a better word. … He’s probably not a bad kid, but he’s stupid,” he said. “If the awning would have caught up, the building would have burned . ... And God forbid somebody is killed, the kid could go to jail for life.”
A passerby doused the blaze with a fire extinguisher, he said.
Mortillaro said he’s hanged the flag outside for decades, but recently has needed to replace it every month or so because of anti-Trump vandalism — “stupid stuff, like ‘f—- Trump’ or ‘deport Trump,’” he said.
“The flag was up long before Trump was president,” he said. He voted for Trump, but doesn’t show it off or put up any political signs, he said.
“Politically, I’m this way: I’m an American. I like my county, and whoever’s president is president. You go along with it, the people, they change every four years. It’s not the end of the world,” he said.