Veteran finds hateful note on car at NY shopping center

QUEENSBURY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – A simple trip to the store ended with a veteran getting a hateful letter left on his car.

When a local Iraq War veteran went shopping Thursday morning, he did not expect to find an anonymous note with ugly language left on his car.

The letter blasted the Marine for having a Purple Heart and serving overseas. It stated, “All of you Islamaphobe vets deserve to die.”

The note has people shaking their heads. Some call the author pathetic.

“It’s just shocking,” Ann Lanoir said. “It’s just ignorant. That’s the way I feel. I feel like some punk wrote it.”

“Makes me sick to my stomach,” Navy veteran Robert LaPrairie said. “To me, it’s an act of terrorism really.”

“I just think it’s awful,” John Mohring said. “It’s very terrible. Veterans are our heroes.”

NEWS10 ABC showed the note to Lt. Steven Stockdale from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office to determine if the person who wrote it could face charges.

“That’s the first thing I look for Rachel [Yonkunas],” he said. “When we see something like that – is there any potential criminality?”

Stockdale said it is illegal to leave a note on a windshield, but he said the biggest disappointment is that the author thought writing the letter was OK.

“Communication these days has gotten very easy for people who want to stay anonymous,” he said. “And it takes a lot more courage to strap on an 80 pound pack and go to the Middle East and fight for your country than it does to scribble on a note and leave it cowardly behind on somebody’s windshield.”