The Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Department is investigating a potential hate crime related to graffiti spray-painted on two cars and a wooden fence last weekend on Lamour Drive.
The graffiti, though difficult to decipher, seems to include the words: “kill women evil,” “evil women” and “honor.” It was left at three residences.
Joy Neilson, whose daughter drives one of the vandalized vehicles, said they’re dumbfounded about who did it.
“It was just ugliness: ‘Kill women?’ Ugliness,” Neilson said. “Was it random? Was it targeted? The lady up the street [whose car also was vandalized] is the same religion; could that be it? I could let my mind spin on for hours.”
Sgt. Alan Chu agreed that without more evidence, it’s difficult to determine motive or culprit.
“This is a new one to me,” Chu said. “It’s isolated in one [area], not all over town, so that’s usually one person angry at something. I’m not sure how, but it sounds to me like somebody is angry at somebody.
“Or it could be totally random.”
At about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Neilson said her daughter thought she heard the sound of spray paint outside her window. She went downstairs to look and saw a man jump in his car and drive away. When she and Neilson went outside again a few minutes later to check on what he had been doing, they found spray paint on a neighbor’s fence, but nothing yet on any of their cars.
When Neilson woke up at 6 a.m., she had a “feeling in my gut,” so she went out for another look and saw that her daughter’s car had been spray-painted. (It took some quality nail polish remover and detailing at a local car wash to remove the offensive graffiti.)
“I’ve lived here all my life and it’s just sad to see all this crime,” said Neilson, a resident of 42 years. “We feel like we live in this little bubble, and we do in some sense, but in others, there’s a lot of change that has happened over the past five, 10 years.”
Still, Neilson said she thinks it’s important that residents keep their cool: “We shouldn’t say, ‘You did this to me, I’m going to do it to you.’ We need to step back and not attack someone — and educate your kids. My daughter said ‘I should’ve gone out!’ But I told her, ‘No, you did everything right that you could have done.’”
“Be a good witness,” Sgt. Alan Chu said. “We prefer you not confront them, call us right away. Tell us what’s going on so we can gather our troops and surround the person.
“We had another one where someone saw the guys and smelled fresh paint and didn’t call us until the morning. It would be really great catching these guys with paint on their hands.”
Neilson said she filed the report with the sheriff’s deputy who showed up when she called about the car. She said her daughter told her another deputy arrived in the middle of the night after she called about the fence, but by then Neilson had gone back to bed and he didn’t take a report.
