Nearly 100headstones were overturned, damaged or broken at the Mount Carmel Cemetery, a Jewish burial place, in Northeast Philadelphia.
A North Jersey man visiting his father’s grave made the grim discovery Sunday morning, and Philadelphia police were later dispatched to the cemetery, at Frankford and Cheltenham avenues, around 9:30 a.m. for reports of vandalism, according to multiple reports.
#BREAKING: Dozens of headstones at a Jewish cemetery in the #Wissinoming #Philadelphia have been broken and overturned pic.twitter.com/dqP4TeSTld
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) February 26, 2017
Aaron Mallin, the man who discovered the acts of vandalism and contacted police, told 6ABC that he hopes it wasn’t an anti-Semitic attack, but instead “just some drunk kids.”
But the apparent vandalism comes less than a week after more than 150 headstones were damaged at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis on Feb. 21. The following day, the New York City headquarters for the Anti-Defamation League received an anonymous bomb threat, prompting a brief evacuation. More than 70 Jewish community centers across the nation had received similar phoned-in threats since the start of the new year. President Donald Trump last week called the recent spate in acts of anti-Semitism “horrible” and “a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”