Caught On Video: 'Red Paint' Vandal Targets Queens Home
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police are looking for a man who vandalized a home in Queens and then appeared to take a photo of his crime before taking off.
And as CBS2's Hazel Sanchez reported, it was all caught on camera.
It's brazen and unusual. Video shows a young man walk up to a home in Glendale, Queens with two paint cans in hand and douse the front porch with bright red paint. He then appears to take a photo before casually walking away.
"I definitely don't want to come home and see like a massacre-looking situation on my front porch," tenant Greta Prell told CBS2's Hazel Sanchez.
But that's what Prell found just before 7 p.m. Saturday when she opened the front door of the multi-family home on 68th Place off Myrtle Avenue she has lived in for the last three years.
"It made me feel like it was some weird biblical times, like some 'Redrum' kind of ... I don't know. It actually freaked me out," Prell said.
On the surveillance video it appears the man was not wearing gloves as he handled the opened paint cans, which he surprisingly leaves behind.
"It looks very intentional," one neighbor said.
Prell and the other tenants who live there said nothing like this has ever happened here before. So they're not sure if they were targeted, and if they were, why.
"I have literally no idea. My landlord and her husband and their child and her parents who live in the basement, they're very peaceful people," Prell said.
Police said they are investigating. Prell said detectives came to the house, but chose to leave the paint cans behind.
"We have a video, we have a screenshot, and we have fingerprints. It doesn't get more abundant than that ... and still nothing," Prell said.
She said the vandal doesn't look familiar. Not knowing why he chose her home makes her nervous he may return.
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