Thursday, October 1, 2026
The allegedly hateful actions of a Brooklyn cab driver finally caught up with him last week, as Demetrios Apolonides, 37, was arrested by Nassau County police officers on Nov. 2 and charged with nine counts of aggravated harassment stemming from a series of incidents in which he allegedly wrote anti-Semitic notes that read “Kill Jews” and threw them out of his vehicle during fare rides to several Long Island communities, including Rockville Centre.
Apolonides, who has been charged with a misdemeanor hate crime, reportedly threw the messages out of his cab window during a six-month period that stretched from September 2009 to March 2010, when he worked for XYZ Car Service in Brooklyn. During that time, he apparently left the notes in Rockville Centre and other Nassau County locations, including West Hempstead, Port Washington and the Munsey Park section of Manhasset.
“I wanted the Jews to find them to think it was the Muslims,” Apolonides reportedly told Nassau County officers.
Apolonides is reported to have written the alarming notes in black magic marker on 1-to-3 inch pieces of papers. Local residents turned the messages in to police after they were seen littering the streets and sidewalks, and detectives soon discovered that the notes were torn sheets of a work log that belonged to the XYZ car company.
“Detectives were able to literally piece together those pieces of paper he distributed, and on the back of them was the full copy of a form for this car service,” Detective Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police Department said.
This was Apolonides’s second arrest this year. In July, detectives arrested and charged him with aggravated harassment as a hate crime after similar notes were found near the Jewish Guild for the Blind on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was released without bail after that arrest, and that case is still pending.
Apolonides has been held on $5,000 bail after his most recent arrest and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was arraigned on Nov. 3 in First District Court in Hempstead.
Apolonides will be charged with a felony and if convicted, he could face up to four years in prison.
