Police are looking for a taxi-driving vandal who was allegedly recorded on surveillance footage attacking a statue of the Holy Family and decapitating a statue of Jesus in front of a Roman Catholic church in New York City. According to WABC, the vandal was recorded getting out of a car across the street from Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Flushing, Queens, at around 5:30 a.m., walking over to the statue of the Holy Family and attacking the figures with a shoe.

Father Sean Suckiel, who serves as pastor at the parish, recounted to the outlet what the footage depicted. He said, “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.” The vandal managed to knock off the head of the child Jesus statue, which was found on the ground nearby. The statues of Joseph and Mary were unsuccessfully targeted and not damaged. The New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed they received a report about the intentional damage done to the 40-year-old statue, according to NBC4.

The Brooklyn Diocese said the NYPD is investigating the statue’s beheading as a hate crime and estimated the damage at approximately $20,000. Suckiel noted the heartbreaking nature of the vandalism while stressing the importance of forgiveness. “My heart just broke,” he told WABC. “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? 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.”

NYPD is investigating a hate crime, the decapitation of the Child Jesus statue at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Flushing, which happened this morning at 5:30 a.m. The damage is estimated at $20,000. Anyone with info is asked to call @NYPDTips. pic.twitter.com/2M50NQrK00

— Brooklyn Diocese Press Office (@BQDiocesePress) July 1, 2024

The attack against the church comes months after NYPD arrested a 16-year-old boy with a lengthy rap sheet in connection with the brutal assault and robbery of a 68-year-old woman on the steps of St. Demetrios’ Greek Orthodox Church in Jamaica, Queens. Hostility against churches in the United States appears to be on the rise in recent years, according to a recent report from the Family Research Council.

The report released earlier this year identified 436 incidents against churches in 2023, more than double the amount reported by the group in 2022 and eight times the number identified in 2018.