Vandals

A DAY AFTER a 21-year-old man was arrested for slashing tires in Northeast Philadelphia, vandals early Wednesday damaged more than a dozen cars with a caustic chemical in Crescentville. The latest spree was reported about 4:30 a.m. on Van Kirk Street near Bingham. Initial reports indicated that an acid-like caustic liquid was thrown on more than a dozen cars, damaging their paint. Vehicles in various Northeast neighborhoods have been vandalized since October, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

Vandals took to the streets last week and went on a spree of smashing windows and bashing mailboxes. In what police said they believed were three unrelated incidents, 14 mailboxes were struck in Towamencin and neighboring Lower Salford Township. Towamencin police said vandals took 15 minutes on Saturday to damage windows in one car and four residences along Sumneytown Pike. Police said witnesses, who were also victims, saw two juveniles walking through their backyards between 5:15 and 5:30 a.m. but never notified police until after they realized the damage was done to their property.

Vandals deflated the tires of 19 school buses and one van in a Great Valley School District lot in Charlestown Township during the weekend, causing the district's five schools to open two hours late yesterday morning, district officials said. The vandals removed the tires' valve stems, said Nancy Ziegler, the district transportation supervisor. The vandalism was discovered about 5 a.m. yesterday when the first employees arrived at the lot, on Charlestown Road adjacent to Charlestown Elementary School, Ziegler said.

John Schroth was 83 years into eternity when vandals tipped over the looming, 10-foot-high granite tower marking his grave in Roslyn's Hillside Cemetery. That memorial, and an almost identical one right next to it, fell and split into several huge chunks. Schroth was not the only victim. Sophie Wahl, who died in 1926; Ernst Wahl, who died in 1929, and an entire generation of Duebles, who were born in the mid-1800s, all had the monuments memorializing their stays on earth knocked over like giant, granite dominoes, some falling under the weight of others.

Chronic teen-age vandalism is plaguing the Northeast Philadelphia headquarters of the Sunshine Foundation, a nationally known group that fulfills the last wishes of terminally ill children. Dried splatterings of eggs and tomatoes, graffiti scrawls and splotches of paint mar the brick walls of the organization's building. Tin sheeting on the facade has been pried out. Sunshine volunteers regularly clean up beer bottles and cans from the front and back steps. "I am so utterly amazed, I can't get over it," said Carolyn Kelly, secretary to the Sunshine Foundation's founder, former Philadelphia police Officer Bill Sample.

Since last December, David Lee's fur store on Castor Avenue in the Northeast has been the target of vandals who claim to be dedicated to saving the lives of animals. "This is the sixth time I've been hit," Lee said yesterday inside his paint-splattered shop on Castor Avenue near Magee. After several threatening phone calls, a lock glued shut and a sign Lee found Sunday stuck to a window that said, "Death Merchant," he is convinced the vandals also are dedicated to putting him out of business.

Eighteen-inch-high orange letters were spray-painted late Monday night outside the Bucks County courthouse complex in Doylestown Borough - at the main entrance to the courthouse, and on the Vietnam War and World War I memorials. On the Vietnam War memorial, the letters read, "FBI = Death," at the courthouse entrance, "Death to the ATF," and at the World War I memorial, "They Died in Vain. " The Bucks County commissioners said yesterday that they believed that the vandals were protesting the federal government's handling of the Branch Davidian cult standoff near Waco, Texas, especially the actions of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Police in Delanco and Delran sorted yesterday through the shambles left in the wake of a crime spree that began Sunday evening in which the culprits vandalized a business and two schools and stole two cars and a pickup truck. No arrests have been made in the incident, which began about 7 p.m. Sunday in Delanco and ended in neighboring Delran sometime before 6:45 a.m. yesterday, police said. Delanco Township Police Lt. Edmund Parsons said the incident began with a burglary at the Rhawn Flange and Machine Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue between 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday.

Montgomery Cemetery in West Norriton, where five Union generals and hundreds of Civil War infantrymen are laid to rest, has been desecrated by vandals, police said. Sometime before 2 p.m. Tuesday, tombstones at the cemetery on Hartranft Avenue were overturned. One fell onto a burial vault, breaking the marble slab covering it and exposing coffins to the elements, Lt. Dale Mabry of the West Norriton Police said. A Christmas wreath and veteran's marker were thrown into the open vault, said Charles J. Kelly, a member of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, which owns the cemetery and tends it. "Some creep comes along and decides to take out what somebody wanted to be their final resting place, and violates it," Kelly, 52, said.

Vandals caused more than $3,000 damage to the property of Cherry Hill Councilman Michael A. Schaffer last week, and Schaffer, who is also a fire chief, said yesterday that the destruction might have been in retaliation for repeated calls to police about drinking on fire company property. Schaffer, a freshman member of the council, said that between 10:30 p.m. last Wednesday and 7:05 a.m. Thursday, someone entered the grounds of his house in the 100 block of Philmar Avenue and tore up a half-dozen six-foot evergreen trees that had been planted recently.

CAR VANDALS struck again overnight Wednesday, in Kensington and Overbrook. Capt. Michael Cram, of the 26th Police District, said that paint was smeared and poured on four cars on Gaul Street near Sergeant, in Kensington, sometime late Wednesday. Two of the cars, Cram said, belonged to the same owner. "It's definitely a copycat, somebody who has absolutely no respect for others," Cram said, adding that it's tough for cops to track down the vandals since no one saw them in the act. In Overbrook, 24 vehicles on Lancaster Avenue near 63rd Street were damaged Thursday between 3 and 7 a.m., police said.

About two dozen passenger vehicles were damaged this morning by vandals who slashed tires, doused cars with a corrosive chemical and dumped sugar in gas tanks in the Overbrook section, police said. Capt. Melvin Singleton, commander of the 19th Police District, said tires were slashed on 17 cars and the paint on seven other passengers vehicles had been stripped away by an acid-like substance. Some cars also had sugar in the gas tanks, he said. A Fire Department Hazmat Unit was called to the scene to scrape off some of the corrosive chemical for testing.

A DAY AFTER a 21-year-old man was arrested for slashing tires in Northeast Philadelphia, vandals early Wednesday damaged more than a dozen cars with a caustic chemical in Crescentville. The latest spree was reported about 4:30 a.m. on Van Kirk Street near Bingham. Initial reports indicated that an acid-like caustic liquid was thrown on more than a dozen cars, damaging their paint. Vehicles in various Northeast neighborhoods have been vandalized since October, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

A day after a 21-year-old man was arrested for slashing tires in Northeast Philadelphia, vandals early today damaged more than a dozen cars with a caustic chemical in the Crescentville neighborhood. The latest spree was reported about 4:30 a.m. on the 600 block of Van Kirk Street. Initial reports indicated that an acid-like caustic liquid was thrown on more than a dozen cars, damaging their paint jobs. Vehicles in various Northeast neighborhoods have been vandalized since October, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

AAA Mid-Atlantic is offering $2,500 for information leading to the arrest of whoever is responsible for slashing tires on parked cars in the Mayfair and Tacony neighborhoods in recent weeks. Mayfair residents awoke Sunday morning to find that tires were slashed on three cars parked on Erdrick Street near Princeton Avenue. "We're concerned about this as a crime, and obviously we respond to all kinds of tire related incidents," said Jenny Robinson, an AAA spokeswoman. The company is funding the reward through the Citizens Crime Commission, and tipsters are asked to call 215-546-TIPS (8477)

PINHEADS, not potholes, are behind the recent upswing in flat tires in Holmesburg. Vandals have slashed 55 tires on Aldine and Teesdale streets between Frankford Avenue and Erdick Street since November, according to Capt. John McGinnis, commander of Northeast Detectives. The most recent attack occurred late Monday during a gap in police surveillance of the area. Because of the similarity of the slashings, police believe that the same thug or thugs, using the same knife, are responsible for all of the vandalism.

Kimberly Esquivel awoke Tuesday morning to a surprise. The vandals who have been slashing tires over recent months returned to her Northeast neighborhood, but, for once, they did not target her car. In the last five months, the Holmesburg woman's tires have been slashed three times. And Esquivel, 27, is not alone as a repeat victim. The perpetrators of a recent tire-slashing spree have hit several people multiple times. Esquivel, who lives on Aldine Street with her girlfriend and 4-year-old daughter, said her insurance wouldn't cover new tires.

A $7,500 reward is being offered for the arrest of whoever is responsible for slicing the tires of at least 55 cars in Northeast Philadelphia since December. The reward was announced today just hours after Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey vowed to step up the hunt for the vandal or vandals during a visit to a Holmesburg neighborhood where tires on at least eight vehicles had been slashed overnight. Police said an examination of the tires from five separate sprees indicated the same blade had been used, leading them to believe the one individual or the same group was responsible.

The owners of 11 cars awoke this morning to find their tires had been slashed in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood. The incident is just the latest in a series of attacks by vandals targeting multiple cars on streets in residential neighborhoods in the city. Synobia Veney, 26, said it was the third time in about three months that her tires had been slashed on the 700 block of Cornwall Street. In the previous incidents, all four tires of her 1998 Chevrolet Malibu had been flattened, but this morning only two tires were damaged, she said.

It is a forlorn sight in what should be a place of honor. The statue of a musket-bearing Civil War soldier, in Bridgeton City Park for nearly a century, is headless, the top of the musket broken off, too. "Who would gain by this? Why would someone even think to do it?" said Bridgeton Chief of Police Mark Ott. "This isn't even just a chip off the base. Someone had to get up 10, 12 feet and work hard to break off a huge piece of granite. " Bridgeton, the seat of Cumberland County, has had a tougher time than most places in South Jersey during the last couple of decades.