Seniors’ Vandalism Raises Stink on Campus

A group of seniors at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach celebrated the last day of class by pulling of a smelly senior prank.

A group of seniors decided to decorate the school early Friday morning, dumping manure and hay on the campus, distributing fish heads and a dozen chickens on the school grounds, freeing hundreds of crickets inside one building, placing dead fish in the school swimming pool and filling some of the outside door locks with glue, police said.

“This went way beyond the simple prank where no harm is done,” said Principal John Giovati, who noted that last year the seniors merely decorated the trees with toilet paper and wrote graffiti with chalk.

Officers arrived on campus at 12:20 a.m. after a burglar alarm went off. They found a barn-yard mess as well as toilet paper strewn on trees and chalk-drawn graffiti on walls, said Mary Laquet, a Manhattan Beach Police spokeswoman.

Police officers interviewed 11 juveniles and young adults seen running from the school. Police booked 18-year-old Matthew Davis of Redondo Beach on misdemeanor vandalism, Laquet said. A 17-year-old juvenile was also booked for vandalism.

Most of the debris was cleaned up by 10:30 a.m., Giovati said. The high school principal said an investigation continues. School officials are deciding how to reprimand the students involved.