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Some crooks may soon have hell to pay.
Unholy vandals tore apart a Long Beach Catholic school — decapitating a statue of Mary the mother of Jesus, tearing up classrooms and stealing audio-visual equipment, cops said.
The vandals left at least $30,000 worth of damage at Holy Innocents School on Monday, knocking off and partially shattering the head of the Mary statue that had been in the school since it was founded in 1958, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Other statues were also damaged in an attack on the school that officials are taking personally, the report said.
gofundme“I don’t know if there is some healing that needs to be done or if there’s some hatred towards like, the religious objects or towards a Catholic church or something like that,” principal Cyril Cruz told NBC. “We don’t know, but our students are just continuing to pray for them so I think that’s so beautiful.”
No arrests have been made and it’s unclear how many vandals took part in the anti-Catholic destruction.
Cruz suggested that he didn’t understand why the thieves would target them, because they are located in a “not so very good neighborhood” and the school receives Title I funding allocated to schools with high percentages of low-income families.
“Sometimes when people talk about private schools, they equate that with money. And ultimately, the majority of our students are on tuition assistance,” Cruz said.
gofundmeA GoFundMe has been started for the school and its raised nearly $90,000 of its $100,000 goal with more than 750 donations. The funds appear to be going towards restoring the school.
Holy Innocents, located in northern Long Beach near the South Wrigley neighborhood, says on its website that its committed “to forming young minds and hearts through a rich Classical Liberal Arts curriculum grounded in the teachings of the Church.”
English (US)