{"id":314295,"date":"2026-08-05T13:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314295\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T13:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:34:36","slug":"video-hammer-wielding-vandal-beheads-virgin-mary-statue-in-queens-church-hate-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/314295\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: Hammer-wielding vandal beheads Virgin Mary statue in Queens church hate crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A hammer-wielding vandal decapitated a statue of the Virgin Mary in a caught-on-camera suspected hate crime at a Queens church, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Surveillance video released by the Brooklyn Diocese shows a masked man hopping a fence into the courtyard of <a href=\"https:\/\/stritalic.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St. Rita Roman Catholic Church<\/a> on 11th St. near 36th Ave. in Astoria shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The vandal approaches the statue, pulls the hammer from his pants pocket and strikes the Virgin Mary\u2019s likeness one time. The statue\u2019s head snaps off, falls from the pedestal to the ground and rolls to the vandal\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n<p>After desecrating the statue, the vandal returns the hammer to his pocket, scales the fence and flees into the night, the footage shows.<\/p>\n<p>The attack is being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force, cops said.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"The remains of the damaged statue of the Virgin Mary at the St. Rita's R.C. Church in Long Island City.\" width=\"5333\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Virgin-Mary.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"9174790\" \/>The remains of the damaged statue of the Virgin Mary at the St. Rita\u2019s R.C. Church in Long Island City. (Courtesy of the Diocese of Brooklyn)<\/p>\n<p>This is the fourth time a vandal has damaged property at St. Rita\u2019s since 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Previous incidents include the shattering of a 60-year-old stained-glass window, defacing a statue of St. Francis of Assisi with graffiti and damaging a statue of St. Jude, Diocese officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone with information is asked to call <a href=\"https:\/\/crimestoppers.nypdonline.org\/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crime Stoppers<\/a> at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hammer-wielding vandal decapitated a statue of the Virgin Mary in a caught-on-camera suspected hate crime at a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,122,124,123,265],"class_list":["post-314295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}