Four Newhall teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of carrying out hundreds of incidents of graffiti vandalism in Santa Clarita over the course of a year, with damages totaling about $160,000, authorities said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
One of the youths — whose ages range from 13 to 15 years old — was arrested 10 days ago, and the others were arrested Tuesday, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said. <\/p>\n
The eldest boy is believed to be responsible for 240 vandalism incidents, with damages estimated at more than $100,000, according to law enforcement officials. The other three youngsters are suspected in 137 incidents, with damages of more than $58,000. <\/p>\n
The four teenagers, who have no prior criminal records, now face charges of felony\u00a0vandalism and misdemeanor\u00a0possession of graffiti tools. They were booked at the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station and later released to their parents. <\/p>\n
If convicted and ordered to pay restitution, the teenagers and their parents could be made to foot the bill for the damage caused by the vandalism, deputies said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The defacement occurred over 11 months and involved tagging at area schools, parks and local businesses and on trails, officials said.<\/p>\n
Using a special graffiti tracking system, sheriff\u2019s deputies are able to determine the similarities in style and content of a certain group of taggers, officials said. In this instance, the tagging crew was deemed to be a new one in the Santa Clarita Valley. <\/p>\n
An anonymous tip led to search warrants being served at the suspects’ homes, officials said. Pens, markers, paints, books and other evidence were recovered, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Sheriff’s officials encourage residents to report incidents of vandalism. Santa Clarita has a program that provides up to $500 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a tagger.<\/p>\n
— Ann M. Simmons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four Newhall teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of carrying out hundreds of incidents of graffiti vandalism in Santa Clarita over the course of a year, with damages totaling about $160,000, authorities said Wednesday. One of the youths — whose ages range from 13 to 15 years old — was arrested 10 days ago, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}