ROSSVILLE — A vandal painted a giant swastika and an anti-Semitic slur on the garage door of woman's Wirt Avenue home — but the woman who lives there said she plans to leave it up so people don't "just forget about this."
Debra Calabrese was woken up about 5 a.m. Tuesday when her son came home and saw the graffiti covering her garage door. The resident, who is Jewish but whose husband is not, said she felt terrible about the incident, but would not let police paint it over it.
"I'm not ready to do it yet, because I don't want them to just forget about this," Calabrese told DNAinfo New York.
She has lived on the quiet South Shore block for nearly 14 years but has never had any similar issues before.
"This is terrible," she said. "Everybody is upset. I've never seen anything like this around here."
The NYPD, which is investigating the incident as a hate crime, does not yet have any suspects in the case.
Hate crimes have soared in the city since the beginning of the year, with the number of anti-Semitic incidents rising a staggering 94 percent in March. Most of the cases have involved racist graffiti, but several bomb threats were called into Staten Island Jewish Community Centers earlier this year.
Calabrese's case was the second racist graffiti found in the span of a week on the South Shore of Staten Island.
An Annadale resident had "n----r get out" and "move b---h" scratched on his car by vandals, the Staten Island Advance reported.
