Leah Grossman had been having trouble with her homeowners association, but the 48-year-old West Hollywood resident said she never thought a member of her board would paint what appeared to be a swastika on her property so late at night.
The incident was captured on video, Grossman said, when one of her neighbors, then a member of the association's board of directors, walked to her front door, pulled down a black marker, and drew a symbol on a soda can. I left outside her door.
“I was very shaken,” Grossman, who is Jewish, told the Times. “This panic just came over me. I was shaking.”
The incident followed instances in which she clashed with the former board member, including accusations — from both sides — of exchanging barbed words, and alleged complaints about Grossman hanging the Israeli flag on her balcony.
She said her first thought after the late-night incident was relief that her two children, ages 9 and 11, were already in bed.
She, too, was getting ready for bed on December 5, when she said she received an alert on her phone that someone was at her front door, sometime after 10 p.m.
This alert caught her attention not only because she lived on a corner of the apartment building that received little to no traffic most days, but also because it was late at night.
The woman, who is Jewish, says that the incident that was captured on video came after clashes with her homeowners association.
In the video, a man who Grossman identified as Mark Nakagawa's neighbor is seen walking up to her door, pulling down the cover of a black marker, and drawing on a box of soda that Grossman had forgotten to bring inside earlier that day.
After seeing this on her front door camera, Grossman opened her door.
“is there a problem?” The woman was seen in the video saying as Nakagawa walked by her door.
“No,” he is heard saying.
“Is that a Nazi sign?”
“no.”
“What is this?”
He answers: “I'm walking here, I don't know.”
“I saw you,” Grossman says. “I have a camera. Like, what is this? What did you draw there?”
“I don’t know,” Nakagawa answers before walking away.
Grossman said the incident saddened her.
The next day, she filed a report with the LAPD, according to records shared with the Times. She added that the police refused to pursue the case.
However, her homeowners association took some action after she contacted the management company saying she was afraid to contact Nakagawa.
Nakagawa did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment from The Times.
A few days after the incident, Grossman received a letter from the homeowners association's legal counsel, informing her that Nakagawa had agreed to resign from the board as well as to stay away from Grossman or anyone who was visiting her on the premises.
“This is to clarify that Mr. Nakagawa’s alleged conduct was in his individual capacity, not in his capacity as a member of the Association’s Board of Directors, and such conduct was not expressly or implicitly authorized, approved, endorsed, ratified or approved by the Board,” the letter says.
Grossman said she has bumped heads at the HOA in the past, especially over complaints that needed repairs were not made. She clashed during one HOA meeting, in particular, with Nakagawa when she told a board member that she felt the HOA was being run like a “fascist dictatorship.”
She claimed that Nakagawa called her a fascist because she hung the Israeli flag on her balcony.
Grossman said Nakajao tried to contact her after the incident on December 5, but she refused to answer messages and hung up the phone.
Nakagawa told KCAL that Grossman called him a fascist, and told the news station that he wanted to “educate” Grossman about the origins of the symbol, a reference to the Buddhist “manji” symbol.
The Manji symbol, which resembles a swastika, faces the opposite direction. The symbol Nakagawa drew on the soda box, although it resembled a swastika, was not drawn as precisely as either.
“The way I handled it, in hindsight, was not the right way to do it,” he told the station.
Grossman said she was not convinced why. She noted that the comment on her knowledge came days after the October 7 attack on Israel launched by Hamas.
“Personally, I'm afraid of it, and I know it might sound exciting,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”
