HIGHTSTOWN — More hateful vandalism was discovered this week in the borough, this time along the Greenways path, on Summit Street.
Police said they responded to a call at 7 p.m. Tuesday from people walking their dog who discovered a mattress along the pathway with a yellow, 1-square-foot swastika spray painted on it. On the opposite side of the mattress, was a racial epithet in yellow spray paint.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact Hightstown police at 448-1234.
The incident is the first reported this year, but just the latest in a extended pattern.
January 2008, police found a 1-square-foot swastika spray painted on Hightstown’s memorial fountain erected at The Point — where Main, South Main and Mercer streets meet. That same morning, State Police found hateful graffiti scrawled on the memorial statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt, two streets signs and the post office in nearby Roosevelt as well as another swastika on a street sign on Etra Road, near Milford Road, in East Windsor.
Days later, three college students from East Windsor — Nikolai Afanassenkov, Max Drazdik and Nicholas Kurahara — were charged in the case with bias intimidation and bias-based criminal mischief.
About 100 outraged residents held a candlelight vigil at The Point, also attended by Mayors Bob Patten, of Hightstown, and Janice Mironov, of East Windsor, to protest the graffiti.
Later in the year, police reported anti-Semitic and anti-American markings on concrete barriers on Route 133 in East Windsor along with anti-Semitic and anti-black graffiti to a building.
And in September, area schools were struck with similar messages days before the school year began.
[vmo: optional ending: ]Officials at the Walter C. Black Elementary School said they found a swastika and the words "U.S. Sucks" on the back wall of the school building.
Police said someone wrote, "Al Qaeda Lives" with marker in Hightstown High School’s gymnasium while "KKK," "White Power" and a swastika was found in the hallway and stairwell.

