Police Probe Dodgingtown Vandalism Incident

Police this week continued their investigation into a vandalism incident in Dodgingtown in which someone used several liquid paints to deface a private US flag memorial to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Police Sergeant Douglas Wisentaner said that both the police patrol unit and the detective unit are probing the case in seeking leads into who defaced the memorial on the property of Howard Lasher at 68 Dodgingtown Road (Route 302).

The memorial consists of the painted image of a US flag on six tree trunks in memory of those who lost their lives in the September 11 attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania.

Sometime between 3 pm on December 6, and 7:30 am on December 7, someone went onto the Lasher property and threw five different colored paints onto the flag image and also smashed two floodlights used to illuminate the flag at night, according to police.

Sgt Wisentaner said that local volunteer firefighters were called in and used water from a low-pressure hose to wash away almost all of the paint that the vandals had splashed onto the image of the US flag. The vandalism that occurred thus is now not that noticeable, he said.

The sergeant noted that weather conditions were wet after the vandalism incident, facilitating the splashed paint’s removal from the trees.

Anyone with information on the criminal mischief is asked to contact police at 203-426-5841.