This is some high-level hate.
A deranged man was so enraged at Barack Obama that he tossed a heavy cinder block through the plate glass window of a Harlem store last month, yanked out a mannequin of the former President, and left it shattered on the sidewalk.
The agitated man walked by the Romantic Depot on Broadway near W. 138th St. on Jan. 26 when he stopped and paced in front of the window. It had a display featuring Obama dressed as a prince, and President Trump dressed as a princess wearing a Make America Great Again hat, said Glen Buzzetti, the owner of Romantic Depot’s seven New York City stores.
The man walked a few feet past the window to a metal barricade that separated the sidewalk from some street construction work, surveillance video shows.
He pulled the barricade aside and picked up a brick or stone from the construction project.
Then he returned to the store display and smashed the window with the brick or stone, the video shows. Next, he yanked out the Obama mannequin, and threw it to the ground. He left standing a statue of President Trump, which was next to the Obama mannequin.
As the man ran off, shocked store staff raced out of the store to survey the damage. One worker followed the man down the block.
“One of the people on our security team, a smaller guy, was able to catch him and held him for the police,” said Buzzetti.
The video doesn’t show what Buzzetti says happened next: Obama fans assailed the crazed man.
“We had to protect him from the crowd,” Buzzetti said. “He was surrounded. We put our loss prevention people out and surrounded him.”
“He could have been killed. We had women trying to kick him in the head. We had to protect him because he had damaged the Obama image.”
Buzzetti said people in the neighborhood are vigilant about crime. “That’s how it is up there and anytime they feel that someone steals, people come out of their apartments …. The local businesses are part of the family. If you just yell, they come running.”
Buzzetti said the man, who was wearing a backpack with a skateboard attached, spewed hateful rhetoric about the 44th President.
“He definitely was a Trump supporter who was very angry with Obama’s policies, and he kept on repeating it after he was caught that he hated Obama and Obama ruined the country,” Buzzetti said.
“It cost us $1,000,” Buzzetti said.
“He said he hated Obama, and that the mannequin was looking at him bad,” Buzzetti said. “He said, ‘That doll was giving me bad looks. I’m tired of him. Obama brought the country down.’ He said he walks by the store every day and sees Obama every day and it made him really angry.”
