When vandals attack

Rip water fountains off walls, cause $20,000 in damage

Teen vandals have wreaked havoc in Destrehan during the past two months by damaging public property.

Ethel Schoeffner Elementary School was vandalized twice, once in December and again in January.  Destrehan High School’s R.O.T.C. portable building was broken into and items were stolen.  An anonymous source, a Destrehan student, said teens tried to sell the items on a popular website for teens called My Space.

On Jan. 3, a group of teens vandalized Ethel Schoeffner. Three 16-year olds and two 17-year-old males were arrested on Jan. 4 for shooting several overhead streetlights at the school with pellet guns, causing them to break. No one was injured.

A separate group again caused extensive damage at the elementary school on Dec.1, breaking windows, flooding Schoeffner and stealing expensive equipment.

Then, on Nov. 26 when students were home on vacation, Destrehan High School’s R.O.T.C. building was broken into and several items were stolen. According to sources, the same group of teens were responsible for the Dec.1 and Nov. 26 break-ins.

At Ethel Schoeffner Elementary, an employee discovered the damage committed by the teens. The employee arrived early and noticed the burglar alarm was activated.  The worker said she continued into the building and noticed glass was broken in the fourth grade hallway. She then called the police.

Detectives arrived at the school and discovered that vandals used a root and rock to break the safety glass windows above the locked double doors. Shattered glass covered the floor near the entrance.

Vandals had also pulled two water fountains off of the walls, flooding at least eight classrooms with about an inch to four inches of standing water.  Media carts containing video equipment, computers and monitors, along with television and video cassette recorders, had been tossed onto the floor and broken. The items were discovered in the water.

Detectives also found that desk drawers and cabinets had been searched in all of the classrooms on the fifth grade hall, the faculty lounge area and in the secretary’s area of the administrative office.  One employee’s Nextel cellular phone was stolen.

According to police reports, vandals not only damaged Destrehan High’s R.O.T.C. building, but the suspects allegedly stole several items, including a camcorder, digital camera, an X-Box video game system and six controllers.

The suspects also broke the windows on the table unit, forced the steel bars inward and knocked a six foot tall book shelf placed in front of the window to block entry on the floor in the process.

“An estimate of the damage done at Ethel Schoeffner totaled $19,500,” Larry Sesser, assistant superintendent of the parish school system, said.