Members of a North Hollywood church were shocked to find a statue of the Virgin Mary vandalized. Anoushah Rasta reports for the NBC4 News on Aug. 26, 2022.
Church-goers at in North Hollywood are hoping that the surveillance cameras right above their statue of Mary will lead police straight to the person who vandalized it.
At the corner of Lankershim Blvd. and Moorpark St. just across the street from St. Charles Borromeo Parish Church the first thing you'd see is a holy statue of Mary.
But on Friday that statue didn't look as it did before.
"I come to this church quite often and I’ve never seen anything like this here. It’s quite disturbing," said April Davis from Toluca Lake.
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Deacon Louis Roche says he was cleaning up trash on the property when he first saw that someone jumped over the fence to do it.
"Who would deface a statue like this? I mean, it’s just like the wild west out here now. So, we’re pretty upset about it," Roche said.
He thinks it happened overnight or early Friday morning.
Her face and hands have been painted black. An LAPD officer came out to the church to take down a report.
"It is always disheartening and concerning when a place of worship is targeted by an act of vandalism," said the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in a statement.
The statue is surrounded by several surveillance cameras and the deacon hopes it caught a face or maybe a license plate number. He is hoping for anything police can use to find the person responsible.
"I just think it’s horrible. I just don’t know what kind of world we’re living in that this would happen at the church," Davis said. "I hope they have it on video."
NBC4 asked the deacon for a copy of the surveillance video but he said he hadn't seen it himself yet. The company that installed the cameras is in direct contact with police and hasn't sent it over to him.
