A teenager accused of spray painting hateful messages on signs in a Fairfax County, Virginia, community, and who police also said is connected to dozens of destruction of property incidents in one night last week, has been arrested.
Gregory Fried, deputy chief of police for Fairfax County’s Criminal Investigation Cyber and Forensics Bureau, said the 16-year-old was arrested after officers were dispatched to an area near Burke Village Center around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday for reports of someone damaging cars in the loading dock area of a business.
Officers said he had spray paint on his hands and was carrying a bag.
Police think he was involved in about 37 destruction of property cases, which Fried said all happened in a 5-square-mile radius over about five and a half hours.
“The property that was damaged, vehicles, street signs, garages, fences, and the value is estimated of the damage of $3,500,” Fried said at a press conference on Monday. “We’ve been in contact with the victims and those in our community that were impacted by these crimes that have occurred.”
The teenager, who police aren’t naming, is facing eight charges, Fried said. Seven are destruction of property charges, and one is a larceny charge connected to stealing a paint can.
Some of the graffiti was “random, just words, pictures. Some of it was bias related, certainly highly offensive,” Fried said.
Police have some information on what may have sparked the incident, Fried said, but aren’t releasing it. The teenager, he said, went to various locations and spray painted buildings, fences and utility boxes, and was smashing out car windows.
The teen may have been throwing rocks at moving cars, Fried said, “which is certainly a concern, and that’s something that we’re tracking down as well through our investigation.”
There were similar destruction cases that happened before the Thursday incidents, Fried said, and police are working to determine whether the teenager was connected to those cases.
Rev. Becca Messman, pastor at Burke Presbyterian Church, said there were multiple signs of graffiti “that were just horrific in their racist and antisemitic words, and some of those were near bus stops where kids were going to meet the bus, and they actually were the ones to discover it.”
A nearby church had its sign defaced, Messman said, and someone called to tell her about a sign that “had expletives and terribly racist words in it.”
Community members have covered the signs with blankets, and spray painted them “so that it’s now virtually invisible,” Messman said.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Messman said. “The thing that people said over and over again was how much one individual can do to spread messages of hate, and it has a chilling effect on people, makes them say, ‘This is not who we are.'”
The teenager, Fried said, was released to his guardians Thursday night.
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