Dorchester Vietnam Memorial Vandalized Again
BOSTON (CBS) - A Vietnam veterans memorial in Dorchester was trashed for the second time in less than a year and now police are trying to identify the person in a surveillance photo.
The vandal spray-painted graffiti, including swastikas, on stones at the monument and American flags were taken and thrown into the water.
The memorial is for the 80 Dorchester men who made the ultimate sacrifice, but it's also a place for their families.
"For somebody to come and do this, they have to be a very angry, deranged, violent person to do it," said memorial administrator Joe Zinck.
Just days before Memorial Day, there was an ugly, offensive act at the site where Dorchester honors their heroes.
"What do we not respect anymore? My parents never got over this," said Thomas Cunningham who lost his brother. "Not that any of us did. Not that you ever do. It's just a shame. I'm just disgusted."
Robert James Cunningham is just one of 80 names engraved and now across the granite, swastikas and other messages are scribbled. It happened around 2 p.m. Thursday; the man who oversees the memorial had just left.
"We put up 100-125 flags all around memorial and around the flagpole," Joe Zinck said. "They were all torn up and thrown into the creek."
Just Wednesday, crews finished landscaping, the finishing touches to $20,000 worth of repairs after it was vandalized in October.
"It's hard to believe somebody would do it on Memorial Day weekend," Zinck said.
The surveillance cameras that recorded the suspect are newly installed following the incident last fall.
Anyone with information about the vandalism should call UMass Boston Police at 617-287-6084 or Massachusetts State Police at 617-740-7710.
