Veteran Memorials In Three States Vandalized Ahead of Memorial Day
Sites in California, Kentucky, and Virginia
As Americans across the nation begin Memorial Day weekend with thoughts and prayers honoring our nation’s fallen heroes, vandals defaced veteran memorials in California, Kentucky, and Virginia.
Memorials to veterans in a Los Angeles neighborhood and a town in Kentucky, as well as a Civil War veterans cemetery in Virginia, were damaged as the nation prepares to mark Memorial Day, officials said.
A Vietnam War memorial in the Venice area of Los Angeles has been extensively defaced by graffiti. The vandalism occurred sometime during the past week, KCAL/KCBS-TV (http://cbsloc.al/1RAa3mg) reported. The homespun memorial painted on a block-long wall on Pacific Avenue lists the names of American service members missing in action or otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.
News of the vandalism came as another veterans-related memorial was reported damaged in Henderson, Kentucky. Police say a Memorial Day cross display there that honors the names of 5,000 veterans of conflicts dating back to the Revolutionary War has been damaged by a driver who plowed through the crosses early Saturday.
In Virginia, the Petersburg National Battlefield has apparently has been looted, the National Park Service said. Numerous excavations were found at the Civil War battlefield last week, Jeffrey Olson, and agency spokesman, said in a news release Friday. Petersburg National Battlefield is a 2,700-acre park marks where more than 1,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died fighting during the Siege of Petersburg 151 years ago.
In Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood, the wall for missing veterans has been tagged previously, but the latest vandalism covers the bottom half of the memorial for much of its length.
The vandalism of the Venice, California memorial appears to be a large graffiti “tag” that covers much of the memorial and is described as “desecration.”
Stewart Oscars welled up as he looked at the vandalized mural located on Pacific Avenue near Sunset Court. It was covered in graffiti from end to end.
“This knocked me out. So sickening. Just sadness…think of all these people. They’re gone,” Oscars said. “I remember the Vietnam war and how friends went to war, and bodies came back. Somehow, it has to be taught that this is not a good idea. This is actually stupid.”
The memorial was dedicated to service members who were listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.
George Francisco is the Vice President of the Venice Chamber of Commerce. He also runs a nonprofit called Veterans Foundation Incorporated.
“It’s a desecration. I mean it’s very simple. There’s no sort of other way around it. It isn’t graffiti,” Francisco said.
Watch the report:
In Kentucky, the vandalism entailed a man driving his vehicle over the white memorial crosses.
[Photo via the Hendersonville Police Department]
A man has been arrested in conjunction with this act . . . after his vehicle was spotted with a white memorial cross embedded in his tires. It’s not clear whether or not this act was deliberate, investigators say.
Henderson Police Department made an arrest in a vandalism case after they found the suspect’s car with a cross and stake to hold the cross embedded in his tires.
Anthony Lavelle Burrus, 27, charged with criminal mischief and leaving the scene of an accident. Burrus was arrested after police said a vehicle drove through the Memorial Day cross display at at 5:55 a.m. Saturday in Central Park in Henderson, Kentucky.
Officers said the motorists damaged 160 crosses. The Henderson Fire Department, as well as volunteers, helped to clean-up the display. Burrus’ 1979 Ford Thunderbird was found abandoned at a McDonald’s parking lot after police found surveillance video of the suspect’s car.
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Comments
We have an administration with no respect for the military, the police, the rule of law or individual responsibility, which is allowing a free for all of behaviors from the lawless and morally bankrupt. These behaviors are being excused by the left, justified by the media and encouraged by academics.
And all the while this is going one, leftest Senator Feinstein can take the time during Memorial Day Weekend to say “enough is enough”on Clinton’s email while ignoring the blatant vandalism in her own state of veteran’s memorials and other states too.
You are so right!
If this sort of thing is organized, it’s despicable. If it’s spontaneous, it’s ominous.
“Fundamentally transforming America”. I see this as a larger movement to discredit anything “military” to “study war no more”. Didn’t President Obama actually infer this at Hiroshima? He wishes to defang the US to prevent future wars… lead from behind…. Wars come about from concepts totally foreign to the Golfing One and his ilk.
We will wind up “leading from below”… as in 6 feet under …. but there will be peace… of the grave for liberty and freedom.
The punishment…or a SMALL part of it…for these crimes should be having to serve disabled veterans for a VERY significant number of hours.
Simultaneous actions, of similar nature, scattered across a wide geographic area. I am assuming, subject to more data, that it was planned and organized. It will take an organized effort to stop them, prevent further such actions, and punish those committing the actions. The government at all levels will refuse to aid in that organized effort against those committing them, as indicated by the refusal of the LAPD to investigate as cited in news reports. With all that implies.
All part of the plan.
The only appropriate answer to this is heavy criminal prosecution, sentencing, monetary penalties and a civil suit for not only physical damages but emotion distress.
We know the one who drove over the crosses is black. Im betting that the the other instances of vandalism were committed by Obama’s sons. Its so sad that these idiots are desocrating memorials to many brave young black men who died in Vietnam. A moment of silence now for those who gave their lives.
And one in Iowa; http://www.kcci.com/news/cedar-falls-freedom-rock-vandalized-by-spray-paint/39783360
They need to find the perps, tie them to a post in the public square and use a whip on them till they are unconscious. How many would it take before this kind of bullshit stops?
The ‘perps’ are the leftists at Harvard (and the like) who pull the strings on the education and media useful idiots to indoctrinate and pollute, with the goal of the destruction of the nation as it was founded.
The biggest two useful idiots reside in the White House.