Police: Over 100 Jewish cemetery headstones damaged

Philadelphia — More than 100 headstones have been vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, damage discovered less than a week after similar vandalism in Missouri, authorities said.

A man visiting the cemetery called police at 9:40 a.m. Sunday to report that three of his relatives’ headstones had been knocked over and damaged.

“The cemetery was inspected and approximately 100 additional headstones were found to be knocked over,” apparently sometime after dark Saturday, a police spokeswoman said in a statement. A criminal mischief-institutional vandalism investigation will be conducted by the police Northeast Detectives Division, she said.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia lists Mount Carmel as a Jewish cemetery.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the report “shocking and a source of worry,” although he added that he had “full confidence” that authorities in the U.S. would be able to catch and punish those responsible.

The damage comes less than a week after a Jewish cemetery in suburban St. Louis reported more than 150 headstones vandalized, many of them tipped over.

Aaron Mallin told WPVI-TV that he discovered the damage when he came to visit his father’s grave. He called it “very disheartening” and said he hopes it wasn’t intended as an anti-Semitic attack.

“I’m hoping it was maybe just some drunk kids,” he said. “But the fact that there’s so many, it leads one to think it could have been targeted.”