Willowick resembles the mythical Whoville these days for more than the community's love of the holiday.
"You got a Grinch walking around," said Patrolman Mark Guerrieri of Willowick Police, "and they're trying to ruin the Christmas spirit."
More specifically, they're going around cutting the wires of the outdoor Christmas displays of several homes in the city.
"Over the last week we've gotten about six or seven calls from different residences stating that their Christmas lights have been cut," Guerrieri said.
Ivan Meckley's home has been hit four times in the last week. "The hardest part is finding them," Meckley said of the breaks in his lights. "They get up there and they'll get in the middle of the four or five strands and they'll snip it up in there and tuck it back up underneath there."
Meckley has been repairing the vandalism himself each time but when he came out Saturday morning to find the lights cut in 13 places he thought about just giving up.
"If it wasn't for the police being so nice coming up here and the councilman, they gave me the incentive to keep going," he said. So he spent three and a half hours Saturday repairing the lines and splicing them back together, one by one.
"Rather for them to defeat me, I figured that's what they would want. So I've been busting my butt today to put them back together," Meckley said.
Police have added extra patrols to the impacted neighborhoods.
---
Follow John Kosich on Facebookand Twitter
Follow @KosichJohn
Download the newsnet5 app:
- Apple
- Android
- Kindle
