The 21-year-old son of a city firefighter was arrested in Brooklyn yesterday for spray-painting a Catholic Church with a slew of sickening sexual images, swastikas and obscenities on a Jewish holiday last year, the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force said. Michael Kirk, who lives with his grandfather on Avenue R in Marine Park, was picked up at home and charged with the Sept. 16 desecration of the Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church.
"I was hoping it wasn't anti-Catholic or Jewish and that he was just crazy," said Monsignor Thomas Brady.
"It will be good for the parishioners and the community to know the police have him in custody and it won't happen again."
Last year on Yom Kippur, Kirk allegedly spray-painted most of Good Shepherd's walls, as well as a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Two swastikas were emblazoned across the doors and bizarre messages were scrawled helter-skelter along the stained glass.
Kirk, who has a prior conviction for assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon, became the prime suspect after police learned he had been arrested in January for defacing a neighborhood private security van with a swastika.
Police hauled in Kirk to compare his writing with that of anonymous letters and graffiti from the church desecration, and said they got a match on the handwriting. Kirk's grandfather, who did not give his name, said, "Everything gets twisted. It's all a mistake."
