Vandals damaged several Halloween decorations at Morning Star Manor. Photo credit: Justin Baumgardner, my FM
It doesn’t matter if it’s a pumpkin or decoration; vandalism is not acceptable, and some residents say they’re frustrated with having to endure costly repairs.
In Petawawa, Morning Star Manor owners say they were left with anger, frustration and disgust after several individuals were caught causing intentional display to several items on their property.
Each year Derek Loach opens a Halloween display to help raise money for charities in the area – with this year donations going to the OSPCA, and the Petawawa Pantry Food Bank – and says this year his display was hit twice by the same person.
“A vehicle stopped at the display around 11:00 p.m. on Friday evening. An individual got out and ran through and destroyed a lot of the front of the display,” he says. “He left but came back in the other direction and did the same thing again.”
After the display was damaged, Loach says it was hard to repair the damage and move on, but when he posted the incident to social media, there was tremendous community support for him to rebuild and move on.
“I got an overwhelming amount of support from the community,” he says. “Hundreds of comments on Facebook, so many messages of support and people willing to pay for the damages.
“At first I was a little down when it happened and started to question if I wanted to keep doing this, but after the community reaction it’s hard to not keep going with it.”
Each year the display brings between $500 to $1,000 for charities and brings in a truckload of food for the pantry.
Other areas were hit by vandalism including Laurentian Valley Four Seasons Trail after 25 of their synthetic pumpkins were smashed and inflatables were kicked and hit.
