Teen Damages Holocaust Memorial, Gets Tackled

A holocaust museum in Boston was vandalized for the second time this summer, and this time bystanders tackled the alleged vandal. Boston police say a 17-year-old shattered a glass panel of the New England Holocaust Memorial with a rock, reports the Boston Herald. The panel contained etchings of the numbers that Nazis tattooed on their Jewish prisoners. Witnesses tackled the teen, who's not being identified because he's a juvenile, and held him until officers arrived, reports the Boston Globe. He's been charged with willful destruction of property, and police are investigating his motive to see whether hate crime charges are warranted in the Monday evening incident.

"It's incredibly disturbing ... coming as it does two days after Holocaust survivors had to witness people marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Va., chanting Nazi slogans," says Jeremy Burton of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which manages the site, per the Herald. Boston's police chief also drew a comparison to Charlottesville and said it's "sad to see a young person choose to engage in such senseless and shameful behavior." In June, a 21-year-old was charged with breaking one of the memorial's 132 panels, also with a rock. Prior to that incident, the memorial's panels had stood undisturbed for more than two decades. (More Boston stories.)