NYPD identifies suspect who stole gold-plated rose from Manhattan church’s 9/11 memorial

Police connected Friday identified the thorny thief who stole a gold-plated rose from a 9/11 memorial show astatine a Midtown church.

Deikel Alcantara, 21, was caught connected surveillance cameras taking the ample roseate from a commemorative show astatine the Church of St. Francis of Assisi connected W. 31st St. adjacent Seventh Ave., down the artifact from Penn Station, cops said.

Police said helium entered the religion astir 2:30 p.m. Wednesday and walked disconnected with the roseate a abbreviated clip later.

The metallic angiosperm served arsenic the centerpiece of a 9/11 memorial honoring those who died successful the violent attack, with the roseate rising from pieces of twisted alloy taken from the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

The church’s erstwhile longtime pastor, the Rev. Mychal Judge, was a Fire Department chaplain who was crushed by falling rubble astatine Ground Zero portion praying for victims and rescuers aft the attack.

Cops released surveillance footage of the fishy moving disconnected clutching the gilded angiosperm successful hopes of generating tips from the nationalist that would assistance them place and find him.

Rev. Brian Jordan, the church’s pastor, hoped that Alcantara would crook himself in.

“[We anticipation he] receives the psychiatric attraction helium needs,” Rev. Jordan told the Daily News Thursday. “He needs nonrecreational help.”

Alcantara is known to religion staffers and had been asked to permission connected respective occasions — doubly connected the time of the theft, Jordan said.

NYPD

A gold-plated metallic roseate that had served arsenic the centerpiece of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi’s 9/11 memorial. (NYPD)

“It wasn’t welded in,” Jordan said of the aureate rose. “It was inserted in. You tin easy interruption it free. [A] woman yelled astatine him, but helium took disconnected anyway. He was carrying it similar it was a container of groceries.”

The pastor called it “an enactment of desecration.”

He said the artwork has an estimated worth of astir $3,000.

However, helium said, “You couldn’t enactment a terms connected that. It signifies, amidst each the debris, the suffering of 9/11.”

Anyone with accusation astir Alcantara’s whereabouts is asked to telephone Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls volition beryllium kept confidential.