Vandals Target Olympia Area Churches

Over the weekend vandals smashed windows at the New Apostolic Church in west Olympia and at the Flood the Sound Church just a few miles away and spray-painted anarchist graffiti along the path between the two churches.

“That kind of made us suspicious,” Lt. Chris Mealy with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office said.

Graffiti left on a nearby store said “No Port Militarization—Oly unite.”

According to detectives, they are wondering if the attacks on the church are somehow a twisted effort to protest war.

“We’re most definitely going to be looking into it,” Mealy said.

The vandalism took place just before the arrival of the U.S. Naval ship Brittin, which is carrying Fort Lewis military hardware back from the war in Iraq.

While most people in Olympia support the right of those who are peacefully protesting the war, they say the act of a few vandals destroying property to try and make a point is senseless.

“I think it’s wrong, there’s other ways to go about it,” Olympia resident Timothy Holt Jr. said.

“I don’t appreciate that at all. I mean to me there’s no excuse to do that. It doesn’t do anything for anybody,” Sylvia Harkness of Olympia told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News spoke with pastors from both churches and both said they do not know why they were targeted.

Anybody with information is asked to call the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.