A flag, a drone, the Star of David and the Winnetka police

Looking for a new place to call home five years ago, Ruairi O’Connor and Stacey Oswald found exactly what they were looking for in Winnetka: an inviting and calming community.

Their feelings for their hometown are being tested.

For months, O’Connor and Oswald have felt unsafe in their home in the 300 block of Winnetka Avenue, where a drone has regularly harassed the couple and on four occasions dropped debris onto their property.

The debris — blue and silver Star of David confetti — has been a statement that O’Connor and Oswald believe is a response to the Palestinian flag that flies in the couple’s front yard. The Star of David typically represents Judaism and is featured on the flag of Israel.

“After it became a pattern … it has made us more angry, even made us more paranoid,” O’Connor said.

Based on information from O’Connor and Oswald, the Winnetka Police Department is investigating the drone activity — including at least three of the confetti incidents: Aug. 2, Aug. 9 and Sept. 18 — and Deputy Chief Dylan Majcher told The Record via email that all the cases remain open.

He declined to answer The Record’s questions or comment further about the investigation.

If you ask O’Connor and Oswald, this all started in 2024 after they placed in their front yard a sign supporting the people of Palestine. Oswald and O’Connor said they believe in standing up for Palestine amid the Israel-Hamas War, during which more than 67,000 Palestinians reportedly have been killed, the Gaza Health Ministry reports, since Hamas violently attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Oswald said of supporting Palestinians. “… And we wanted to let those people in the community know that we are here and we stand alongside you, whoever those people are.”

After a few months, that sign was stolen. In response a week later, O’Connor and Oswald installed a Palestinian flag on a tree in the front yard.

The home’s support for Palestine garnered positive and negative feedback. Sometimes, a passing motorist would yell a mean comment or a pedestrian would stop to question the flag. But the couple often received letters of thanks and appreciation, and even gifts.

The Palestine flag flew for about seven months before someone pulled it and its bracket off the tree in July.

Oswald said she felt “just disgust and anger.”

“Why would someone do that? That’s something so docile; it’s not doing anything. It’s just a flag,” she said.

O’Connor, a high school special-education teacher, said that while he was also upset, at that point he wasn’t concerned.

“It could have been a punk kid. … It doesn’t necessarily have to be a hate crime, just someone saying, ‘It’s different; I’m going to tear it down.’ They may not know much about it,” he said.

Still, O’Connor and Oswald set up security cameras and also reinstalled the flag — this time a bit higher on the tree.

Three weeks later, Oswald stepped out the front door to find small, shining blue and white Stars of David — hundreds of them, littering the walkway, the bushes, the grass, the roof.

As irritating and offensive as it was, in Oswald’s mind, the jig was up. Her home’s security cameras, she thought, surely caught the offender(s) in action.

But no such luck.

She and O’Connor would learn a few days later that the debris was delivered from above.

“There was a bit of hope initially that we got it on video,” O’Connor lamented. “We had the timestamp, the evidence and police are going to be able to track it, but after a while, (the police) response to the drone was like, ‘We don’t know what to do.'”

A confetti drop happened again a couple days later, and a week later and again a month later on Sept. 18. All the incidents — one of which a neighbor recorded on video — were reported to police, as confirmed by the department. They were identified as “disorderly conduct” in the department’s weekly reports.

O’Connor and Oswald said they also informed local police of the previous flag and sign vandalism and of another time when a drone hovered over the house for an extended period of time.

All recreational drones over 0.5 pounds must be registered with the FAA, which restricts recreational users of drones from “causing a hazard” to people or property. Any privacy concerns, though, the FAA leaves up to local law enforcement.

Oswald and O’Connor said they felt the police department didn’t take their reports seriously enough, and by the third confetti drop, the couple’s frustration had mounted.

“It’s been weeks and nothing has happened, nothing has changed,” O’Connor said in September.

Oswald wrote to The Record on Oct. 23 that the couple had not communicated with the Winnetka police in a month. The last correspondence reportedly was a Sept. 21 email, which was shared with The Record, and in it, an officer said the department would increase surveillance in the couple’s neighborhood.

Majcher said in a response email Oct. 23 that O’Connor and Oswald’s cases remain open.

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