Police on Friday identified the thorny thief who stole a gold-plated rose from a 9/11 memorial display at a Midtown church.
Deikel Alcantara, 21, was caught on surveillance cameras taking the large rose from a commemorative display at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on W. 31st St. near Seventh Ave., down the block from Penn Station, cops said.
Police said he entered the church around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday and walked off with the rose a short time later.
The metal flower served as the centerpiece of a 9/11 memorial honoring those who died in the terrorist attack, with the rose rising from pieces of twisted steel taken from the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
The church’s former longtime pastor, the Rev. Mychal Judge, was a Fire Department chaplain who was crushed by falling rubble at Ground Zero while praying for victims and rescuers after the attack.
Cops released surveillance footage of the suspect running off clutching the gilded flower in hopes of generating tips from the public that would help them identify and locate him.
Rev. Brian Jordan, the church’s pastor, hoped that Alcantara would turn himself in.
“[We hope he] receives the psychiatric care he needs,” Rev. Jordan told the Daily News Thursday. “He needs professional help.”
Alcantara is known to church staffers and had been asked to leave on several occasions — twice on the day of the theft, Jordan said.
NYPD
A gold-plated metal rose that had served as the centerpiece of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi’s 9/11 memorial. (NYPD)
“It wasn’t welded in,” Jordan said of the golden rose. “It was inserted in. You can easily break it free. [A] lady yelled at him, but he took off anyway. He was carrying it like it was a bag of groceries.”
The pastor called it “an act of desecration.”
He said the artwork has an estimated value of about $3,000.
However, he said, “You couldn’t put a price on that. It signifies, amidst all the debris, the suffering of 9/11.”
Anyone with information about Alcantara’s whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
