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Two teen girls turn themselves in after probe into defacement of synagogue and another building in Wilkes-Barre.
JEN MARCKINI
jmarckini@timesleader.com
WILKES-BARRE – Two teen girls – one a self-proclaimed Nazi – were arrested Thursday and charged with spray-painting the Ohav Zedek Synagogue and another building with anti-Semitic words and symbols.
18-year-old
Nora Rynkeiwicz turned herself in to police on Thursday. Here, she is taken to jail after her arraignment on charges she spray-painted the Ohav Zedek Synagogue.
Nora Rynkeiwicz, 18, of Factoryville, and her
17-year-old juvenile friend, turned themselves in to police. Rynkeiwicz, a senior at Wyoming Valley West, told a judge she has been living with her grandmother in Plymouth for the past several years.
Dressed in baggy camouflage pants and Doc Martens black leather boots, Rynkeiwicz was taken to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility from District Judge William Amesbury’s courtroom after her arraignment late Thursday.
Rynkeiwicz’s parents, who sat two rows behind their red-headed daughter during the hearing, could not produce the $35,000 straight bail ordered by Amesbury.
Rynkeiwicz is charged with institutional vandalism, a third-degree felony, for spray-painting racist remarks and symbols on the Ohav Zedek Synagogue, 242 S. Franklin St., police said. She faces charges of criminal conspiracy for the graffiti on the temple and the vacant Mertz building on Conyngham Avenue.
“From the beginning, we knew that it wasn’t a random act of graffiti, that it was targeted toward the Jewish faith,”��”�� said Wilkes-Barre police Detective Ronald Foy. “You’re not going to get words like that by any normal Average Joe walking down the street with a can of spray paint.”��”��
The charges against the juvenile accomplice will be filed in the juvenile court system.
Police said swastikas and Nazi beliefs were found on Rynkeiwicz’s MySpace.com page.
On the garage door of 221 Conyngham was a swastika and the words “Hitler was right,”��”�� which appeared to have been applied with the same copper-orange spray paint used on the temple.
The aerosol spray-paint cans were gathered as evidence during a search on Tuesday of the juvenile’s home on North Washington Street in Wilkes-Barre, according to police.
Rynkeiwicz was charged with separate misdemeanor counts of criminal conspiracy and criminal mischief for allegedly agreeing with the juvenile that they would both vandalize the synagogue and the Mertz building.
It was Monday evening when Detective Foy received a phone call. The person on the other end told the detective that he knew who committed the vandalism at the temple. He knew Rynkeiwicz for about a month. She told him she wears Nazi-related clothing to signify her membership.
The informant, who police did not identify, said Rynkeiwicz told him while on a school field trip on March 28 to the Irem Temple Shrine Circus that she would spray-paint swastikas on the synagogue that night.
It became the rumor in the high school halls by Monday. The story was the two females used orange and silver spray paint to mark the temple and Rynkeiwicz was wearing the same black leather high Doc Martens when she did the spray-painting.
The female juvenile admitted guilt to police, along with the involvement of Rynkeiwicz, who is allegedly a “Nazi”��”�� follower.
The juvenile teen told police she has known Rynkeiwicz for several years and started to fall into her Nazi belief system. Rynkeiwicz was spending the night at the juvenile’s home the night of the vandalism that occurred during the early morning hours on Saturday.
Rynkeiwicz and the juvenile went to East End Liquidators and bought a can of copper spray paint.
The juvenile called her mother, who was with a relative at a hospital on that Friday night, and asked if they could go to Denny’s with a friend, Brandon Gawelko.
After they left Denny’s, Gawelko planned to go home, but before doing so he dropped them off a couple blocks down from the temple on South Franklin Street. They also asked him if he could pick them up a couple blocks the other way.
Police said Gawelko was not aware of the duo’s plans.
The juvenile told police she only had the silver paint and painted the Star of David on the front door. Rynkeiwicz is accused of doing the rest.
A $5,000 reward from the Greater Jewish Federation of Wyoming Valley is contingent on successful conviction. Police executed search warrants and recovered evidence, which included the spray paint cans used on the synagogue.
Don't get caught messin with the jews. They and their puppets will make sure you get the max.