ENCINITAS, Calif. — A family in Cardiff is picking up the pieces of their Halloween decorations. Vandals did several thousand dollars worth of damage to the family’s holiday display that they do every year for the kids that come through the neighborhood.
Rick Cassar and his family put up 12-foot tall skeletons and hang larger-than-life zombies and ghosts in the front yard. They create a cemetery of sorts with scattered bones and tombstones. Cassar says, “During the day, families come. They bring little kids. People are walking up and down the street, stopping to look at it. And that’s what my wife loves about it. Little kids are coming by all day long stopping to look at everything.”
Cassar has to hire someone to help him get the decorations up because they’re so huge and heavy and the set up is complex. Last week, someone pushed over the gigantic skeleton at his driveway and broke the base. “They’re pretty heavy. They’re pretty big. It takes 2 people to stand him up,” Cassar said.
He put stones around the base to prop it back up. But Saturday night, while Rick was out picking up his son between 9:50-10:45pm, someone knocked down both huge skeletons and tried to destroy the display. The head of the large one closest to the house, right outside the window where Cassar sat watching TV moments earlier, broke into pieces. Other parts of the skeleton, shattered.
Cassar has cameras. He says neighbors also have surveillance cameras that captured things Saturday night. Cassar has been in education for decades and has his own suspicions. He told CBS 8, “We have the 2nd best school district in the state, multi million dollar houses. Everybody buys their kids $2,500 E-bikes. Where we're missing the boat, we're not teaching our kids gratitude. We're not teaching our kids responsibility. And in trying to give everything to our kids, we're failing to teach them how to be good citizens.”
Cassar filed a police report and met with deputies. He has a reward for anyone with information that leads to the culprits. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office tells CBS8, “with the current estimated damage, it is possible the suspect would be facing felony vandalism charges.”
Cassar says he’ll press charges when deputies find who did it, and he’ll go to small claims court to try and get back the repair and replacement costs. He’s not angry like he was when he first came home to see the destruction. Now, he wants whoever did it to be held accountable and to learn from their wicked Halloween behavior. He says, “We're not going to let it ruin it for the hundreds of good kids that come here. And especially the little ones who enjoy it so much.”
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