Vandals attack slowpitch facility

Stewart Burnett Photo

Vandals attacked the Surerus Park Slowpitch storage building late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning in a desperate attempt to enter the facility.

Stewart Burnett Photo

Vandals attacked the Surerus Park Slowpitch storage building late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning in a desperate attempt to enter the facility.

Vandalism continues to be a problem in the community as the Surerus Park Slowpitch storage building was targeted Wednesday night.

Some time between 10 p.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday, vandals assaulted the building, ripping off wood panels, breaking windows and even forcing themselves through the underside of the building to gain access to the inside.

The intruders went beyond simple graffiti or trouble making, putting in a large amount of effort to get through the walls and crawl underneath the building and then inside. They stole nothing, as the building stored only trophies and toilet paper.

“It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” said Janet Prestley, president of the Fort St. John Mixed Slowpitch Society.

“There’s nothing in there to steal. We might be missing a couple of rolls of toilet paper, but I think they just did it to wreck stuff.”

With the increase in vandalism in the area, Prestley said she’s happy the City is taking care of this, but that money is running out.

“It’s just the fact that it seems like anything we do get, you can’t keep anything because they keep wrecking stuff out there. We’ve had a ton of vandalism this year with spray painting and stuff like that.

“Not to say that we’re going to increase league fees, but it’s money that we’re trying to pay off bills with that’s now going to end up going to repairs that shouldn’t have to be made. Not much you can do about that, I guess.”

Working on the site was Scott Travis of the Fort St. John Public Works Department, who said vandalism has been getting worse.

“Over the years it’s been getting extremely worse. Every year it seems to get worse and worse and worse. Now we’re starting to see vandalism happen in the city more and more every day, especially in the last couple of weeks.”

He said he doesn’t know what would motivate the vandalism.

“It’s just random. I don’t think it has anything to do with kids just not having things to do. It’s just kids out there who want to vandalize. They go out with the intent of wanting to screw something up. It kind of makes you worry about our new generations.”

He said this level of crime is starting to get serious.

“Cross our fingers that they catch somebody. Spray painting we can paint over. This though, this is getting to be major damage, major vandalism. We’ve had them going in and turning on all our irrigation and flooding our infields, but never this kind of damage.”

When asked what he would say to the vandals, Travis paused for a moment and chuckled.

“I don’t really want to put that on record. It wouldn’t be nice.

“Somebody needs to be taught a lesson.”

With files from Kelly Lapointe

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