SEE IT: Woman Smashes Statues Outside Forest Hills Church

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Police are looking for a person who smashed a pair of decades-old religious statues outside of a Forest Hills church on Saturday, July 17 — the latest in a rash of attacks against Catholic churches, according to church officials.

In an incident captured on video around 3:30 a.m., a woman walked up the steps of Our Lady of Mercy church, located at 70-01 Kessel Street, and knocked down two statues — one of the Blessed Mother and one of St. Therese the Little Flower, according to multiple reports.

She then picked up the statues and repeatedly smashed them against the ground, before dragging them into the street and hurling them against the concrete. Both statues, which reportedly have stood in front of the church since its construction 84 years ago, were left in pieces.

“It is heartbreaking, but sadly it is becoming more and more common these days," Father Frank Schwarz, the pastor of Our Lady of Mercury, told the Forest Hills Post, alluding to a recent spate of attacks against Catholic churches citywide.

Schwarz, who was reportedly in the rectory during the time of Saturday's attack and called 911, told the NY Daily News that several days before the same woman toppled over the statues but didn't destroy them.

Although the church's custodian screwed the statues into the base, the woman still managed to push them off on Saturday.

"She appeared to have some kind of a hammer or something and she was stomping on the statues hammering them and just completely demolished them as you can see," Schwarz told the Daily News.

The Daily News also reported that several similar incidents occurred in Brooklyn this May, as well as one statue-toppling incident in Coney Island last September.

Since Saturday's vandalism, church leaders assembled the broken statue pieces on the lawn in front of Our Lady of Mercy, and put signs on them asking people to "please pray for the person who did this," reported the Forest Hills Post.

Schwarz told the Post that he is praying these kinds of attacks "against Catholic churches and all houses of worship will end, and religious tolerance may become more a part of our society.”

The NYPD, which is investigating this incident as a hate crime, has still not identified the woman who smashed the statues, but included video footage of the incident from the church.

Anyone with information about this incident can call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782) or submit a tip online or on Twitter.