Satanic Graffiti Found Inside Tujunga Church

When the Rev. Frank Hallock arrived to open up the United Methodist Church of Tujunga at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, he was shocked to find satanic graffiti scrawled across the walls and windows of the education and auditorium buildings.

The graffiti, spray-painted in blue and green, included slogans such as “Satan Lives” and symbols such as pentagrams, upside-down crosses and the number “666.” It completely covered the southeast wall of the Sunday school and appeared prominently on several walls nearby.

Walls Clean on Saturday

Hallock said the walls were clean when he left the Tujunga Canyon Boulevard church about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Most distressing for Hallock, the church’s associate pastor, was a statement written on a classroom window that read: “Death to Children and to Holy Rollers.”

Although Los Angeles police asked him not to paint over the graffiti until they could complete their report, Hallock said he and another churchgoer hurried to cover up that phrase and “the four-letter words before kids came to Sunday school.”

He said repainting of the walls will be completed Tuesday, at a cost of about $700.

Officer Debra Kirk said the graffiti did not appear to be gang-related. But Manuel Velasquez, who monitors gang activity for Community Youth Gang Services, a publicly supported agency, was not so sure.

Velasquez said the words “Stoners 13” indicated that the graffiti was either the work of members of a long-haired gang known as the Stoners or of people emulating that gang’s worship of Satan.

Common Stoner characteristics include a love of heavy metal music by groups such as Black Sabbath, whose name was featured in the church graffiti, Velasquez said.

Worried About Gang Link

The possibility that the graffiti could be gang-related worried Hallock. But he said he prefers to believe it was the product of local youths trying to beat “the summertime blahs.”

Officer Normand Dumais said the incident followed a series of vandalism and theft problems at several churches in the area, but he said that so far, officers do not believe the cases are related.

As of Sunday night, police had no leads in the case, but Dumais said they would increase patrols of the church grounds.