NYC teen accused of defacing war memorial during anti-Israel protest shaves head to hide identity: police

A teen anti-Israel protester accused of shamefully vandalizing a hallowed war memorial during a violent rally later shaved his head to hide his identity as media scrutiny around the demonstration grew, police said Friday.

The 16-year-old suspect — a Tottenville High School student already known as a regular at protests held by the anti-Israel Within Our Lifetime — showed up to Manhattan court Friday with a buzz cut, which he adopted after he and other demonstrators were photographed and videotaped scrawling graffiti including “GAZA” on war memorials in Central Park on Monday, police and law-enforcement sources said.

The teen’s family used a keffiyeh to try to hide him from photographers as they left court after he was arraigned on felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor graffiti charges and freed.

“He’s a very good kid, that’s it, that’s all I’m going to say,” the teen’s father said outside the family’s Staten Island home after court.

The boy was ID’d as one of the vandals who defaced the WWI memorial dedicated to Manhattan’s 107th Infantry Regiment by spray-painting “GAZA” and “Free Palestine” on it, authorities said Friday. He allegedly vandalized a statue of Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, too.

“He’s accused of spray-painting the word ‘Gaza.’ He’s seen with the spray paint clearly on video writing out the word ‘Gaza,’ ” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters at a briefing Friday afternoon.

“He shaved his head when he found out he was wanted,” Kenny added.

“The incident itself was posted on multiple, multiple social platforms, and we were able to use facial identification recognition.”

The teenager was taken into custody Thursday evening — after he and his family engaged in a more than three-hour standoff with cops at their Staten Island home, according to a neighbor and police sources.

The suspected student, whose Instagram account has been yanked down, “posted a picture of the cops outside his house yesterday, and it said something like, ‘NYPD get out,’” said a ninth-grader at Tottenville HS who saw the post.

The neighbor, who didn’t want to give her name, added to The Post, “The police were here for three or four hours, from about 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock.

“Some police wore suits, others had vests. … Everybody in the neighborhood was watching,” she said.

“He’s a normal kid. He’s a nice boy. The parents are nice,’’ the neighbor insisted of the suspect and relatives, who police sources said are Palestinian.

“He must have got caught up in the moment and followed a bad crowd.”

The teen, whose name is being withheld by The Post because of his age, is suspected of taking part in what authorities called “despicable vandalism.’’

He was accused in a post on X by NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry on Thursday night of having taken part in the vandalism of a historic World War I memorial — an act considered so offensive that Mayor Eric Adams even donated $5,000 of his own money toward the apprehension and conviction of the culprits.

The NYPD public information office said a few hours later only that the teen was charged with defacing the Sherman statue.

It then back-tracked Friday and said the teen was only charged in the desecration of a bronze statue of a Union Army soldier from the Civil War.

In the later briefing with reporters, Kenny said the teen had allegedly defaced the WWI monument and Sherman.

The crimes occurred Monday night as a mob tried to storm the star-studded Met Gala at the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.

The teen was identified by authorities four days later, including with the help of tips to the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline, law-enforcement sources said.

A caller told police the name and date of birth of the suspect, as well as the school he went to, sources said.

The cops then called Tottenville, where a school safety agent confirmed the teen’s ID, sources said.

Police went to the boy’s home — and spent hours negotiating with his parents, who refused to hand him over or even let the officers inside, sources said.

It was finally agreed that the parents would walk the teen the two blocks to the 121st Precinct station house, where he was arrested, sources said.

“It’s not really a surrender when we’re at your front door and you don’t have a lot of options,” a source said.

“It was the easy way or the hard way, and this was the reasonable way.”

Kenny added, “We were at his residence trying to make an apprehension, the father came out, asked what was going on and basically retained an attorney and worked out his surrender.

“We had Hate Crimes investigating just in case it went that way. It was deemed not to be a hate crime,” the top cop said.

The ninth-grader at Tottenville said the suspect “is sweet” and also very involved with social justice.

“He is really political. He’s always posting about Palestine on Snapchat and Instagram, always posting ‘Free Palestine,’ ” the student said. “He goes to the protests a lot.”

Another neighbor, Simone Bullard, said the family “has lived here maybe eight or 10 years.

“It’s horrible. He’s a good kid who must have been caught up in the wrong crowd,’’ Bullard said. “There’s a lot of bad things going on in the world right now.’’