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Police were searching for a vandal who defaced the front of a church in upper Manhattan with graffiti that included the words, “You must pay! Allah!”
Most of the deep purple-color scrawl was contained on a poster promoting a pilgrimage for the parish’s Haitian society, said Father Evaristus Ohuche, the new pastor of St. Catherine of Genoa on West 153rd Street near Amsterdam Avenue. The poster was taken down by police to dust for fingerprints.
Father Ohuche spoke to CNY on July 29, two days after police were on the scene to investigate the incident, which took place around midnight on July 26.
Other lettering, mostly indecipherable, was scribbled on the left side of the church building. That graffiti was still visible, in a lightened state, after a parish maintenance worker cleaned the area. The pastor said he thinks that “we can clean it off ourselves” with further scrubbing.
The vandal was captured in the act on surveillance video. Father Ohuche said that he hoped the perpetrator “was someone who was drunk, and not a hate crime.”
Father Ohuche arrived at St. Catherine of Genoa on July 1. “I am walking into this,” he said. “This is only my third week here.”
Father Ohuche said he was reassured by the quick response of police including officials and officers from the local 30th Precinct as well as officers with the community affairs and hate crimes units.
“They’re on it,” the pastor said. “They said they’re going to find out who did it.”
