Crime Watch

ESCONDIDO -- A threatening message left on a church's answering machine
last weekend is being investigated by police as a possible hate crime.

Escondido police Lt. Jim Maher said a person called the Bahai Faith Church
on East Valley Parkway and said he wondered what kind of people they were. The caller said he would like to find out more about the congregants so he could harm them, Maher said.

He also used racial epithets in the message, Maher said. The call was the first of its kind to the church, which practices independent world religion, police said.

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