Mass Vandalism in Waynesboro

Waynesboro Police are looking for vandals who painted the town red, white, and black early Friday morning.

Police have spent the day checking on reports of graffiti that is usually associated with white supremacist groups. Police say they have received almost 20 reports of such markings.

Glenda Carroll and her husband woke Friday morning to find a giant swastika painted on their garage door.

"I was very surprised, because we had never had anything in our neighborhood like that," says Carroll.

All over town, houses, garages, cars and even businesses were tagged. Various places including Target, some furniture stores and other businesses such as Total Performance Golf on Route 250 were all tagged.

Total Performance Golf owner Todd Hall says he's not used to seeing crime.

"You see something like this and you always think about the crime element. Gangs, drugs, you wonder is this something that will lead to an eventual break-in? You can just never tell," says Hall

Waynesboro Police Sgt. Kelly Walker says it could be evidence of a white supremacist group or gang in the area, but they don't want to label that it yet.

"Certainly, we'll be looking at any possible gang affiliation, but we'll also be looking at other avenues to see if there's any hate groups involved, or to see if it’s just a vandalism, destruction of property in and of itself," says Walker.

Walker says businesses should concentrate, for now, on cleaning the markings up to prevent future problems.

"You want to give the person who painted the graffiti as little exposure as possible. That way the clean neighborhood atmosphere won't become an attractive spot," says Walker.

Augusta County had some of the same tagging in Stuarts Draft and Fishersville. Staunton has also seen similar vandalism problems within the last few days.

Source: WHSV