{"id":87942,"date":"2026-01-03T03:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T03:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/87942\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T03:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T03:57:07","slug":"bronx-church-member-assaulted-trying-to-stop-theft-of-ornate-easter-candle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/87942\/","title":{"rendered":"Bronx church member assaulted trying to stop theft of ornate Easter candle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A 64-year-old parishioner at a Bronx Catholic church was assaulted while trying to stop the theft of an ornate Easter candle on Christmas Eve, cops said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The victim was inside <a href=\"https:\/\/ourladymtcarmelbx.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Our Lady of Mount Carmel<\/a> church on E. 187th St. near Hughes Ave. in Belmont when he spotted the thief snatch the candle around 6 p.m. on Dec. 24, police said.<\/p>\n<p>The man attempted to intercept the hulking crook, who punched the victim in the face, cops said.<\/p>\n<p>The attack left the victim with a fractured orbital bone. He was treated at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sbhny.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St. Barnabas Hospital<\/a>, according to police.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=R12Fvvt8mEQ\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A CBS reporter<\/a> spoke to the house of worship\u2019s Father Carlos Germosen about the brazen theft.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomeone who had been praying in the church came after the person robbing the candle and tried to stop them,\u201d Germosen said.<\/p>\n<p>Police released an image of the suspected candle thief on Thursday.<\/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 64-year-old parishioner at a Bronx Catholic church was assaulted while trying to stop the theft of an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-87942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","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-sub-county-region","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87942","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=87942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}