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Published: May 26, 2010

“Vandalism of a heinous nature”

Police investigating desecration at Catholic school in Maywood as likely hate crime

Vandals broke into and ransacked St. Rose of Lima parish school in Maywood, a small city in Los Angeles County, scrawling “666” on walls and driving a knife into the face of a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Maywood-Cudahy Police Department reports.

“On Monday, May 24, 2010, Maywood Officers responded to the Santa Rosa De Lima Catholic Church School (4430 W. 60th Street) on a vandalism call at that location,” police said in a statement. “Upon arrival, officers saw that a suspect(s) had broken into the kitchen area and caused extensive vandalism damage.”

Police gave no estimate of damages, but did provide additional details of the extent and nature of the vandalism. “Further investigation revealed that some of the vandalism was of a heinous nature, and in fact, consistent with a ‘hate crime,’" said the police statement.

“The suspect(s) defecated in the auditorium (adjacent to the kitchen area) and wrote ‘666’ on areas of the kitchen, and a cross was displayed in a sacrilegious manner,” police said.

Photos posted on the department’s website showed ransacked cabinet drawers strewn across the floor along with their contents, and what appeared to be food splattered against the back of a stove area, where a cross had been placed upside down atop the stove.

“The Maywood-Cudahy Police Department is asking for the public's assistance in solving this investigation,” said the police statement. “If you have any information, please call the Maywood-Cudahy Police Department Detective Bureau at (323) 562-5005. The handling investigator is Detective Fierro.”

The incident in Maywood is the latest in a series of attacks against Catholic churches in California over the last few years. Just days before Christmas 2009, vandals knocked over and smashed into pieces a 60-year-old statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary outside Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Woodland – the third time since 2007 the church had been the target of similar crimes.

In April 2009, just hours before Easter services were to commence, a vandal or vandals decapitated a statue of the Blessed Virgin outside Santa Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica, the parish where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, are members.

In early January last year, vandals spray-painted swastikas and the message “Niederauer, Ratzinger – where is the love” on the front walls of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco.

In late October of 2008, a ciborium containing consecrated hosts was removed from a locked tabernacle and stolen during a burglary at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Watsonville. The thieves also stole a safe that had been bolted to the floor containing $44,400 in cash and checks.

(Photos accompanying this story courtesy of Maywood-Cudahy Police Department.)

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