2 Little League Snack Bars Hit by Vandals

One month after vandals ransacked the West Valley Little League’s equipment shed and snack bar in Encino, ballplayers a few miles away found similar destruction at their headquarters in North Hills on Tuesday.

Sometime Monday night, thieves apparently used crowbars and sledgehammers to force their way into two snack bars belonging to Mission Hills Little League on the grounds of the Sepulveda VA Medical Center, said Mark Violin, a league volunteer.

More than $1,000 in food was stolen from the two facilities, Violin said, including boxes of candy bars and frozen hamburgers, hot dogs and french fries.

“Everything they didn’t take is spoiled,” he added, explaining that the vandals left numerous refrigerator doors open in their haste.

Violin speculated that the thieves made off with the league’s food out of spite after realizing that no money is kept in the snack bars overnight. He noted that despite the food thefts and the damage to the doors, very little was broken inside the buildings.

Still, the concessions represent the sole source of income for the league’s 40 teams, income that was lost Tuesday afternoon when two of the league’s three snack bars remained shuttered during ballgames.

Violin said that vandalism is a constant irritation for Little League volunteers but that the damage has always been relatively minor.

“We’ve got to do something,” he said. “Right now, I’m checking into alarms.”