According to Amanda Lindner of Patch.com, a spray painted SLAYER logo at a park in Long Island, New York was was confused with a hate crime symbol Tuesday night (August 13).

One of the buildings at Wicks Park in Commack was marked with black graffiti consisting of the word "SLAYER" and a pentagram.

After a resident called in the incident, police were initially investigating the vandalism as a hate crime but quickly realized they were on the wrong track.

The SLAYER logo features a pentagram formed by four swords and a circle with its logotype in the middle. Sometimes the logo appears as the swords pentagram on an eagle, which is controversial because of its resemblance to the Nazi eagle atop the swastika.

SLAYER has been accused of holding Nazi sympathies due to its song "Angel Of Death", about German doctor Josef Mengele and his horrific "experiments" at the Auschwitz death camp. But late SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who was an ardent collector of World War II memorabilia, explained that the song was in no way intended to glorify Mengele. "I know why people misrepresent it," he told a radio interviewer. "It's because they get a knee-jerk reaction to it. There's nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man because to me — well, isn't it obvious? I shouldn't have to tell you that."

Photo credit: Amanda Lindner / Patch.com