Vandals deface McLean Little League facility
http://www.insidenova.com/news/crime_police/fairfax/vandals-deface-mclean-little-league-facility/article_bb45589e-068a-11e4-a422-0019bb2963f4.html
Vandals engaged in some decidedly unsportsmanlike conduct two weekends ago when they broke into the McLean Little League’s snack bar and caused several thousand dollars’ worth of damage.
Sometime during the evening of June 27 or early morning of June 28, the miscreants broke three windows and entered the building at 1836 Westmoreland Street in McLean. They ate some of the available foodstuffs, stole a nominal amount of money from the league’s cash register and destroyed that machine, said league president Chris Shue.
The vandals then broke into a locked entryway leading to the building’s second story, which the league uses for meeting and registration purposes. The suspects discharged a fire extinguisher around the building’s entire second floor, covering uniforms, records and furniture located there.
“The damage was such that we had to have ServiceMaster come out with two crews to professionally clean the room,” Shue said. “The cost for that alone was close to $5,000.”
The vandals also kicked in a closet door and tried to break into the building’s locked equipment-and-utility room, but only managed to dent severely the room’s rolling metal door, Shue said.
McLean Little League’s building has been broken into four other times in the last two years, but never has sustained this degree of vandalism, he said.
League officials after previous break-ins replaced broken windows with unbreakable Plexiglas plates, but lacked the money to switch out all the windows for the stronger material, Shue said.
The building has an alarm system and cameras, but the alarm was not armed during the evening of the June incident because several league teams had been going in and out of the facility that day for all-star game practices.
In a further case of bad luck, the league recently upgraded the park’s wireless Internet capabilities, but had not set up its cameras for that system, Shue said.
League officials have met with a security company following this latest break-in and are in the process of upgrading the complex’s security. Officials also notified the McLean community about the incident and received a “generous outpouring of support,” Shue said.
Fairfax County police were able to retrieve footprints, fingerprints and DNA evidence from the scene, but so far no leads have emerged on the suspects, he said.
The break-in’s timing especially was bad because the league soon will host all-star games and will hold two state Little League softball tournaments starting July 10, Shue said.
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