Vandals Go on Rampage at La Puente High School Campus

Students arriving at La Puente High School on Monday were confronted by the results of an overnight rampage by vandals who shattered the school’s 36-year-old mosaic logo, gouged doors, overturned phone booths and splashed paint everywhere.

The worst and most costly damage was done to the swimming pool, where so many gallons of paint had been poured that a golf cart pushed into the deep end was not visible.

School officials said the vandals, when caught, will be punished to the fullest extent possible.

“This is vandalism on a felonious level,” Principal Phyllis Wiersma Phillis said. “The kids and teachers are angry. This is a school of proud achievement.”

Officials discovered the damage at the school in the 15000 block of East Nelson Avenue just before 11 p.m. Sunday. An event on campus had ended about 5 p.m., so the vandalism apparently occurred between those times.

Sheriff’s detectives are investigating, but had made no arrests.

Phillis said the vandals “knew where everything was kept.” They broke into a storage area where gallons of paint were stored and splattered the senior wall, covering the names of graduating seniors. They threw paint in the metal workshop and in the pool filter system. They grabbed dozens of fluorescent lights and smashed them, sending glass flying. They gouged huge holes in a gymnasium door and spray-painted graffiti throughout the school.

A third of the school’s tile logo of the La Puente Warriors was gouged from the ground.

On Monday, officials had painted over the graffiti and cleaned up much of the paint and glass. It is too early, they said, to estimate the cost of the damage.

Repairs to the swimming pool will take at least a few weeks, forcing the swim and water polo teams to go elsewhere, Phillis said.

At an assembly Monday, students established the La Puente High School Restoration Fund, and within a few hours more than $400 had been contributed. Calls offering help came from alumni across the region.

Senior Latoya Lewis, the student body president, who said she considers the campus her second home, said: “My house has been trashed. I am very disappointed. Whoever it was, they didn’t act on human emotion.”

But, Lewis said, the 1,500-member student body will rally.

“The school will definitely come together.”