Historic trolley is targeted
A month after a spate of vandalism came to a head at Presque Isle’s Mantle Lake Park, the police are trying to track down individuals who wrote obscenities on a number of vehicles last week, including the Presque Isle Historical Society’s Molly the Trolley.
Seven vehicles in the area around State Street, near the Post Office, were defaced with vulgarities over the course of Thursday and Friday nights, and the police are now pursuing several suspects, said Presque Isle Police Department Corporal Thomas Pearson.
The vehicles, including Molly the Trolley and the car of a senior citizen, had various expletives and offensive words (like KKK) written on them in erasable marker, the kind used by car dealerships, and nothing was permanently damaged.
The individuals and the city were spared from the kind of vandalism that hit Mantle Lake Part last month, when a group of juveniles sprayed graffiti with racial slurs, Nazi swastikas, drug symbols and vulgarities, and destroyed the park’s kitchen, leading to as much as $10,000 in damages.
Pearson said the police investigation into the State Street incidents does have some suspects, although no arrests have been made and Pearson declined to say whether or not the suspects are juveniles.
