In the Mount Lebanon neighborhood in Pittsburgh,PA, an anonymous person took pine cones and wrote hate messages on them.
“Kill the Jews!” was found spelled out in pine cones with a swastika on Tuesday morning, according to a report by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette .
The woman who found the threat in a residential neighborhood rearranged the cones to read “Love,” but not before taking a photograph of the hate message and calling police, Mt. Lebanon Police Lt. Duane Fisher told the newspaper.
In December, swastikas were drawn into a windowsill of a girls’ bathroom at a local middle school, and a racial slur was painted on a tackling dummy on its sports field.
Prior to that, a swastika was drawn into the mulch near a local elementary school’s playground; a middle school student admitted to drawing that swastika.
Fisher told the newspaper it is likely that the latest incident was also the work of a student “that isn’t aware of the weight of their words and what they’re writing and the potential impact it has on people.”
A school crossing guard frequently uses the pine cones at that corner to leave messages for children such as “Have a nice day,” Fisher said.