Another swastika appeared at a Moore County church, this one painted on a church sign in Robbins similar to one on the Shiloh Tabernacle church sign in Carthage.

Robbins Police Chief Jeff Sheffield and Lt. Robert Tew were out on Old Plank Road late Tuesday afternoon at a Hispanic church whose sign bears two blue Stars of David.

Now it also bears the infamous Nazi emblem. Sheffield said they are investigating this as a hate crime.

“Not sure, but I think Iglesia Torre Fuerte is Spanish for Strong Tower Church,” the chief said. “We are trying to reach the pastor.”

A local attorney, Matthew Rothbeind, saw what had been done to the church sign and reported the crime to the Robbins Police Department.

Back in July, vandals spray-painted a Nazi-style swastika over Hebrew letters for Shiloh, the name of the church and a Hebrew word referring to the Messiah.

“The swastika that was spray-painted on our church sign is an occultist sign of hate and murder,” Shiloh’s pastor Troy Wiley said. “Adolf Hitler rose to political and religious leadership using ideas and spiritual doctrines from four different occults that he himself was a member of.”

Later, in a letter to the editor, Wiley called on other Christian churches to come together to stand against what he described as a “satanic force that has targeted this area.”

He pointed out how the swastika painted over their church name was canted at a 45 degree angle, just as ordered by Adolf Hitler.

“As a result of his leadership, millions of Jews were executed,” the pastor said.

No arrests have been made yet in the Carthage incident.

Like that on the Shiloh sign, the swastika on the Iglesia sign is black, spray-painted at the Nazi angle.

Rothbeind himself is Jewish; his family escaped Nazi Germany in 1937. A grandfather, awarded the Iron Cross for heroism in World War One, had been free from persecution for a time but finally fled.

When Rothbeind saw this new swastika while on his way to court in another county, he stopped to take the photograph with his cellphone.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana.

In Robbins, musicians and singers practicing for their Friday and Sunday services said they’d first noticed the swastika about a month ago. The church has a new pastor since the sign was painted, so they had been planning to repaint it in any case. The new pastor lives in another county and could not be reached for comment by press time.

Contact John Chappell at (910) 783-5841 or jfchappell @gmail.com.