Mom, girls accused of anti-Semitic vandalism on Valley houses

NORTHRIDGE, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A Northridge woman is accused of helping her young daughter and two of her friends vandalize two homes and scrawl anti-Semitic messages.

The man who lives at the houses asked not to be identified. He says he woke up to find his property covered in toilet paper and human feces left on his front porch.

And as the son of a Holocaust survivor, the most disturbing part was what was scrawled across front stoop in maple syrup: swastikas and the word "Jew."

The homeowner's 13-year-old daughter says she used to be friends with three girls who are accused of vandalized their home.

"Two of them have been to this home, two of them met my mother," said the resident. "Two of them were at my daughter's bat-mitzvah, so they understand the correlation between Jews and Nazi symbols and how they don't really go well together. And I think it then began to really upset my daughter that 'Why would they do this?'"

And even more shocking, the mother of one of those girls has now been charged in the crime. Police say Catharine Whelpley drove the girls to two homes and to the store to buy toilet paper, waited in the car while they vandalized the properties, then drove them back to her house.

"My mother went to a concentration camp at the age of, a little bit older than what her daughter is right now. And I don't know if she can put that two together, what that must mean, to be torn out of your home and put into a ghetto," said the resident. "To have this woman bring her daughter here to put this kind of symbol at this home, is just horrifying."

At the second residence, the girls were captured on surveillance camera.

Whelpley is set to be arraigned June 28.

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arrest, vandalism, los angeles news, rudabeh shahbazi

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