The witness said the vandal threatened him with a razor when he asked him what was he writing on the Sikh Gurdwara’s wall.
A man was captured writing hate messages on one of the walls of the Hollywood Sikh Temple in Los Feliz in the state of California, last week. The Gurdwara claims to be the first Sikh Temple in the US.
In the video, a person is seen writing on the wall and then leaving the site on foot after a witness captures the act on camera, the NBC Los Angeles reported.
“I said I was going to call the police on him at which point he said he felt threatened,†the witness Karna Ray said. “He said, ‘I will slit your throat.â€
The Hollywood police are investigating the incident. Ray, a New York resident, was visiting the man when he encountered the person scribbling with a black sharpie on the clean white wall of the temple, International Business Times reported. Ray uploaded the video on Facebook, which received more than 850,000 views.
Ray said he was particularly disturbed by one of the messages that asked for “nuking†of Sikhs, the website reported.
One of the members of the temple, Sarab Gil, said he would like to invite the vandal to the temple and apprise him of Sikhism.
“I would love to invite the person in the temple, make him, show him what he is missing,†Gil said, NBC reported.
California Sikh Council’s Nirinjan Singh Khalsa said he is closely following the incident with the Los Angeles Police Department.
“This particular incident isn’t a matter of swastikas and ‘go home, ragheads,’ which we get sometimes,†Khalsa said. “This seems to be a diatribe by someone who may or may not be mentally imbalanced.â€
Here is Ray’s video that captured the incident:
https://www.facebook.com/karna.ray.3/posts/2811573168756