{"id":266587,"date":"2026-08-16T23:22:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T23:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/266587\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T23:22:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T23:22:23","slug":"man-wanted-in-connection-with-vandalism-on-oy-yo-statue-outside-weitzman-national-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/266587\/","title":{"rendered":"Man wanted in connection with vandalism on OY\/YO statue outside Weitzman National Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Police are searching for a man they said was caught on camera vandalizing the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Old City.<\/p>\n<p>They said just after 8 p.m. on Thursday, a man was seen writing an \u201coffensive message\u201d on the OY\/YO statue right outside the museum.<\/p>\n<p>He then left the museum and hopped on a train a few minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>State Rep. Tarik Khan said he spotted the graffiti and reported it to both the police and local organizations that track antisemitism.<\/p>\n<p>The museum called Thursday&#8217;s incident &#8220;deeply troubling,&#8221; but said it won&#8217;t be intimidated. <\/p>\n<p>The man\u2019s identity is unknown. Police are still searching for a motive and investigating whether this could be a hate crime.<\/p>\n<p>About a year ago, on Aug. 18, 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audacy.com\/kywnewsradio\/news\/local\/suspect-in-vandalism-of-phillys-jewish-museum-surrenders\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a man was caught spraying red paint<\/a> on the museum&#8217;s exterior. A week later, red paint appeared on a display showing solidarity with Israel on the 5th Street side of the museum. Leroy Hayes was charged in connection with both incidents. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Police are searching for a man they said was caught on camera vandalizing the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6551,69,71,70,709,112462],"class_list":["post-266587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-independence-mall","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-vandalism","tag-weitzman-national-museum-of-american-jewish-histor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}