Attack on Judge’s Home Called Hate Crime

SAN JOSE —  Three youths were in custody after allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jack Komar in what police described as an anti-Semitic attack.

The youths--two unidentified 17-year-olds and 19-year-old Victor Podbregar--were booked for investigation of committing a hate crime, terrorism and arson.

Police said Komar is Catholic, but the teenagers thought he was Jewish.

“It’s very, very clear that the hateful motive involved in this firebombing was because the suspects believed that the residents living in that particular house were Jewish,” said San Jose Deputy Police Chief Donald Anders. “That was the primary motive.”

Officers said one of the juvenile suspects called 911 after the firebomb was thrown early Monday and attempted to blame someone else. But investigators soon tracked the crime back to the youth. Racist literature, paint ball pistols and pellet guns were confiscated as evidence.

Anders said the two juveniles were also looking at hate literature on Web sites accessible on their school computers.

The youths live near the judge’s home, and are also the prime suspects in an incident last year in which a swastika was painted on his house.

Neither the judge nor his wife was injured when the firebomb hit their front porch. Damage was estimated at several thousand dollars.

Police Chief William Lansdowne said that although there are no large organized gangs of racists in San Jose, there are a number of youths who consider themselves skinheads and who commit hate crimes.

“These are particularly cancerous acts because they not only target the person who’s the victim, but they target everybody else who is a part of that group,” he said. “In this particular case there is no misunderstanding that they targeted this residence because they felt the person who lived there was of Jewish extraction.”

Also on Monday, San Francisco police said they were investigating some anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls of a Jewish family center.

Officer Sherman Ackerson said the incident will be investigated as a possible hate crime.

He said there are about 50 anti-Semitic incidents in the Bay Area each year.