Suspect Held for Blue Line Graffiti Spree

Sheriff’s deputies arrested a 16-year-old Long Beach boy suspected of causing $8,000 in damage by spray-painting and etching graffiti onto windows, walls and fences along the 19-mile Blue Line, authorities said Saturday.

The boy--whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile--was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism Friday after undercover sheriff’s deputies assigned to follow him saw the boy put a marking on the window of a Long Beach transit bus, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Linnemeyer said.

The same marking has been scrawled on Blue Line trains and at stations serving the light-rail system, Linnemeyer said. The boy was carrying ink markers and spray paint when he was arrested, he said.

“Once they identified his tag, they set up a surveillance and darn if he didn’t do the same thing,” Linnemeyer said. Two juveniles who accompanied the boy were not arrested, he said.

Sheriff’s deputies in August arrested two South Gate teen-agers suspected of causing $30,000 in graffiti-related vandalism to the Blue Line and public buses. In that case, undercover officers followed the pair and arrested them as they spray-painted a wall.