(Oct. 9, 2026 / JNS)
Lawrence Puccini, a junior at the University of New Mexico, a public school in Albuquerque, isn’t Jewish. But he wanted to do something to memorialize Oct. 7 victims.
Puccini set up a memorial on the third anniversary of Oct. 7 near a duck pond on campus—the same area where anti-Israel protesters made an encampment in 2024.
The memorial featured one Israeli flag for each of the nearly 1,200 victims and a sign explaining the installation.
“I’m a non-denominational Christian, but I did want to do something to honor the Jews that had fallen that day,” the 28-year-old New Mexico native told JNS.
An Israeli faculty member came over to praise it, Puccini told JNS.
“One exchange student from Israel appreciated what we were doing,” he said. “A couple of other people were happy to see it. A lot of people walked over to take a picture of it.”
“Some of the people, who came to take a picture and left, came back with more people to try and start trouble,” he told JNS.
But two hours after it was set up, the memorial was destroyed. Puccini and others who helped him create it watched as students stomped on the flags. A female student took the sign, which Puccini took back. She then rolled her scooter over the flags, he said. The sign was stolen again and torn up.
“Before I started recording, they literally spit on our memorial,” Puccini told JNS. “Multiple people, not just one, spit at the memorial.”
“We tried to make it clear to them that this is a memorial that was built for those who died in a horrible terrorist attack, and we’re just trying to remember them,” he said.
Lawrence Puccini with his Oct. 7 memorial at the University of New Mexico, Oct. 7, 2026. Credit: Courtesy.
In a video shared with JNS, students can be seen stomping on the flags and chanting “from the river to the sea” and “death to Israel.”
Puccini called campus police to report the vandalism. Officers told him that it was unlikely they would catch the suspects.
He has already submitted photos and video to the school, but administrators are on fall break, so responses might be slow, he said. (The university told JNS that its response to questions may be delayed for that reason.)
Puccini told JNS that he was glad the incident didn’t turn physical.
“I was a little rattled afterwards,” he said. “I tried going to class after the incident, but I couldn’t do it. I only stayed 10 minutes and then got up and left.”
Looking back, Puccini is “glad we did it.”
“Hopefully we’ll do it again,” he told JNS. “We’re not going to let them deter us.”
The political science and communications major, who is minoring in religious studies, said that he hopes to start a pro-Israel group on campus “to counter the protests and lies.”
