The Knucklehead of the Day Carnival Part Eleven

We stay close to home for our next winner. Our eleventh winner is 18-year-old Connor Ranieri. Ranieri gets the award for his acts of vandalism committed down in Boca Raton last weekend. The young man painted swastikas on a Judaica store. Connor turned himself in to police yesterday.

Whether this was hate or a prank it don't matter. If convicted, Ranieri needs to pay in some way for his crime. Community Service done at a synagogue would sound good to me.

For acts of vandalism, Connor Ranieri is today's eleventh Knucklehead of the day.

Open Post- Right Wing Nation, Bright & Early,

An 18-year-old suspected of painting swastikas and hate messages on the storefront of a suburban Boca Raton Judaica store last weekend turned himself in at the Palm Beach County Jail Thursday afternoon to face a hate crime charge.

Connor Ranieri of Deerfield Beach was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief, enhanced by the state's hate crime law. If convicted, Ranieri could be sentenced to up to a year in jail. His arrest caps off a campaign by YiddishKeit store owner Yosef Brooks, the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League and local religious leaders condemning the anti-Semitic symbols and words Brooks found on his storefront in the Mission Bay Plaza at U.S. 441 and Glades Road on Sunday.

"Such a thing will not go unnoticed," Brooks said Thursday.

He left the graffiti — backward swastikas and "bun the Jews" scrawled in white paint, on his storefront for more than two days because he didn't want people to forget about the incident.

A flower shop van parked near his store also was vandalized.

On Monday, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous tip from someone who said they saw Ranieri vandalize the storefront and van, according to an arrest report filed by the sheriff's office.

Investigators called Ranieri's mother in North Carolina and told her about the crime her son was suspected of committing. She later told investigators that her son said he did it. She told investigators "I cannot believe it," the report states.

An anonymous tipster gave investigators more detail, describing how Ranieri walked up to the storefront, scribbled something on the windows and the van and walked back to his black Saab and told his friends about the vandalism, according to the report.

Brooks, who was relieved that the sheriff's office was able to identify a suspect, said Ranieri's arrest should be a warning to young people who consider such vandalism a joke.

Cross posted to Bullwinkle Blog