Police searching for vandal who beheaded Catholic church statue in Flushing, Queens
FLUSHING, Queens (WABC) -- Police are searching for the vandal who beheaded a statue at a Catholic church in Queens over the weekend, but this is not the first time the church has been targeted.
The Statue of the Holy Family sits outside the Church of the Holy Family in Flushing.
Video shows a man get out of the taxi he was driving and walk toward the statue around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday.
He stops to take off his shoe, which he uses as a club just moments later.
"Then he goes to the front of the statue and starts hitting the face of St. Joseph, then attacks the Blessed Mother, then attacks the face of the Child Jesus," said pastor Father Sean Suckiel.
The suspect keeps pounding until the head of the Child Jesus snaps off from the statue.
This is the second time vandals have attacked statues at the church. Last year, someone ripped one, meant to represent an angel, from its pedestal.
Suckiel watched the video when he noticed the damage.
"My heart just broke, and of course I'm asking the question: why? Why did this guy do this? Certainly the statue is not in his way, it was very deliberate for him to do this, so the big question is why? " he said.
The church will hire experts to find out if the statue can be repaired, or if it has to be replaced altogether. Either way it will cost thousands of dollars.
The promise of the Catholic church, of course, is forgiveness. Nobody said it would be easy.
"We pray for the guy, and we want justice served, but we also have to forgive, and we know that he could not have been in the right state of mind to do this," Suckiel said.
The church's video is not terribly clear, but police are looking at much better video from their own cameras nearby and hope it can make out a license plate or medallion number on the taxi the man was driving.
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