The vandalism discovered inside a Shelton church Monday morning was, extensive, expensive, and offensive.
But the priest who leads the 100 or so families who worship there said they don’t feel anger toward whoever perpetrated the damage.
“We have to pray for those people that they find their way to God,” said Rev. John Strynkowski.
Staff arrived at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, at 380 Long Hill Ave., Monday morning to find pews overturned, statues shattered, and oil poured all over the church’s benches and carpeting, Strynkowski said.
Two cars parked outside the church were also damaged.
Nothing was stolen from inside, but a preliminary tally of the damage totals about $40,000, he said.
The church has insurance through the Diocese of Bridgeport, Strynkowski said, “But we’ll take donations.”
Strynkowski said he thinks St. Margaret’s was targeted because it’s a church.
“There’s people who don’t like anything good,” he said.
Hate Crime?
But was it a hate crime?
Police say they won’t know that until they catch whoever did it and find out why.
“I don’t want to determine it a hate crime at this point,” Shelton Police Det. Sgt. Kevin Ahern said Tuesday. “It’s early in the investigation. We just started on this yesterday. (We can’t conclude anything) until we piece everything together and look at things. Once we can develop a suspect maybe we’ll get a clearer picture as to why this was done.”
In Connecticut, hate crimes — principally, intimidation based on bigotry or bias — are based on whether a person intends to intimidate or harass others because of their “actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation.”
Ahern said police haven’t yet developed any suspects in the case, so they can’t know exactly what motivated whoever vandalized the building.
“People can speculate but we want to see where we go with this before we determine something like that,” Ahern said. “There was an awful lot of damage. It looks like someone was angry or mad. Specifically what it is, we don’t know yet.”
But would the sheer amount of the damage indicate more than one person was involved in trashing the church?
Not necessarily.
Investigation
“At this point, we don’t know that and we don’t want to draw any conclusions until we have some facts together,” Ahern said. “At this point it’s hard to say. There’s a lot of damage there. Was it more than one (person)? I don’t know.”
Strynkowski said he had planned on installing security cameras, but not in time to capture last weekend’s vandalism.
“He apparently took over within the past year, and has been slowly upgrading the property, changing locks, implementing new procedures, that type of thing,” Ahern said. “One of the things on his list was cameras. They were due to be installed.”
Ahern said anyone with information is asked to call the Shelton Police Detective Bureau at (203) 924‑1544.
Asked if police had any leads so far, Ahern said it’s still early in the case.
“At this point because it’s an open investigation, we’re not going to give out too many details as to what we think or who we’re interested in,” he said, adding that police hadn’t yet identified any suspects.
Growing Parish
Strynkowski said the vandalism comes at a time when the church is making strides.
“Our parish was moving forward considerably,” he said, adding that more than 100 families worship there.“The parish was moving in the right direction. This will make the parish stronger.”
Though the vandalism was disheartening, Strynkowski said the response from the community has been “tremendous.”
“People have been stopping by asking if they could help in any possible way,” Strynkowski said.
“The outpouring has been unbelievable,” he added. “The warmth, and the people willing to roll up their sleeves to help out the church.”
