SKOWHEGAN — It’s called the Skowhegan “rec center,” but beginning late last month, the name might well be changed to the Skowhegan “wreck center” — where windows were broken, screens were slashed and two utility trailers were damaged so badly they will have to be junked.
The suspects are believed to be a couple of boys who are under the age of 10 but have not been identified, police said.
Skowhegan police Officer Tifani Warren said the first report of vandalism was received Sept. 23 when someone said they saw young children throwing rocks through the windows at the facility on Poulin Drive.
“The rest of them are what I found on my own,” Warren said of subsequent discoveries of vandalism. “I was doing more property checks, checking the area out more, and I began to find more and more damage.”
All of the windows in a storage trailer behind the building were discovered to have been smashed with rocks. Warren also found “fake Halloween blood” that had been spread all over the inside and on the contents of the trailer. Five of that trailer’s windows were broken, and three more were smashed at another blue trailer.
“There were 14 windows on the rec center itself that they slashed all of the screens. They were brand new windows,” Warren said. “All 14 screens were slashed. The original report was just the trailers, and I went back up and that’s when they reported the screens that had been slashed over night. That was Sept. 26.”
Warren said there currently is no dollar-value estimate on the damage, but the two trailers either will be junked or taken to the transfer station to be destroyed. There also was damage done with spray paint on the sides of the rec center and on a couple of picnic tables as well as a broken outdoor water fountain, she said.
Warren said the damage is extensive.
“It’s definitely horrible that a place that we have for children to go and enjoy themselves and get outdoors is getting destroyed,” she said. “It’s just putting other people in danger with all the broken glass everywhere and just ruining it for everyone else.”
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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