Ten Commandments Park struck by vandal, again
A lone vandal struck the God’s Ten Commandment Park in Columbia Falls early Monday morning, spray painting signs and damaging property. (Jeremy Weber photo)
A lone vandal struck the God’s Ten Commandment Park in Columbia Falls early Monday morning, spray painting signs and damaging property. (Jeremy Weber photo)
For the fourth time in as many years, the God’s Ten Commandment Park in Columbia Heights was the target for vandals early Monday morning as a lone individual snuck onto the property to spray paint anti-Christian messages and destroy property.
According to park owner Philip Klevmoen, the vandal made his way onto the property just after midnight and spent more than 20 minutes doing damage before leaving the same way he had arrived. When Klevmoen arrived at the park Monday morning, he found several signs defaced, the straps from the park’s revival tent had been cut and the main building and door also had messages painted on them. The intruder had even brought a bottle of plant killers to destroy the flowers on the property.
“It’s not that big of a deal to me, but it is irritating that someone in the community would do this for the third or fourth time,” Klevmoen said. “This was just a guy wanting to do damage. He either didn’t want to steal anything, or couldn’t.”
The spray painted messages included one to “praise Allah,” the same message left at the sight a year ago in very similar handwriting.
While the vandal was caught on film by security cameras this time, Flathead County Sheriff’s Deputy John VanGundy says he will still be hard to identify.
“It really does look like a white guy with his face covered, but I don’t know if we would ever be able to identify the person just from the video. Unfortunately, the description matches a lot of the dirtbags we have around here,” VanGundy told Klevmoen. “It’s a good bet that it is the same person, but there are more than just one of those type of people around here, so you never know. I’m not a handwriting analyst and the paint wasn’t exactly the same as last time, so I can’t say for sure. The idea motivating it seems to be the same.”
Klevmoen said he has also contacted the FBI, which investigated the previous incident as a hate crime, but was unable to identify the vandal.
Klevmoen is offering a $500 reward for information leading to the identification of the person responsible for the crime.