A young woman dressed in all black cutting down posters of Israeli hostages in Brooklyn threatened a Jewish security volunteer and pepper sprayed him after he confronted her.
Twenty-year-old Melissa Ugur was allegedly seen using a knife to tear down fliers in Midwood at around 2.30pm on Saturday when she was confronted by a Shmira Public Safety Officer.
Shmira is a non-profit volunteer safety, search and rescue emergency services team that operates around the clock. The organization is primarily funded and staffed by Jews, but volunteers strive to ensure the safety of each member of a community irrespective of religious believe.
When confronted, Ugur began yelling ‘I’ll cut you!’ at the man who had asked her why she was taking down the posters.
She then sprayed the 48-year-old man with pepper spray, according to authorities.
A still from the video of Melissa Ugur being led away by police after pepper spraying a volunteer safety officer in Midwood, Brooklyn
The knife found at the scene that Ugur had allegedly been using to cut down hostage posters
As police led Ugur to the back of a cop car, she shouted ‘They’re kidnapping and I pepper sprayed him!’
A video obtained by the New York Post partially captured the bizarre incident on camera.
Ugur, who lives in Midwood, was charged with assault, menacing, and criminal possession of a weapon.
She was arraigned on Sunday in Brooklyn Criminal Court and released without bail.
Her next appearance is scheduled for January 18.
The incident in Midwood is the latest on a growing list of confrontations between individuals tearing down posters of the missing hostages and those questioning their acts of hostility.
As the war in the region rages on, individuals tearing down posters have been spotted all over Manhattan, as well as around several parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
A few days ago on the Upper East Side, a man sparked outrage by also pulling down posters and asking: ‘Where are the Palestinians?’
A composite image from Shmira’s social media that documents the scene of the crime and the tools Ugur used – including her pepper spray (top left)
Pictures of the kidnapped Israelis have been hung around major cities – many of them have been torn down
In a more recent incident in Brooklyn, a Jewish woman approached a couple who were tearing down posters in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
‘These are American citizens,’ the Jewish woman yelled at the couple, who stood saying nothing.
Eventually, the man started to laugh and said: ‘We don’t consent to you recording us.’
They then walked away.
On October 17, two young women were caught tearing down posters at NYU’s Tisch Hall.
They stripped clean a wall where students had plastered the faces of some of the hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas and ran off with the posters in their arms.
In a separate Brooklyn incident, a woman named Sarah Daoud was seen scraping down the remainder of a hostage poster, while saying aloud the word ‘calba,’ the Arabic word for dog.
To the person who is recording her, she turns and says, ‘F*** you. F*** you. And burn in hell.’
