OLD NOTRE DAME HIT BY VANDALS OVER WEEKEND

The back door of the old Notre Dame High School stood broken after it and other parts of the school were vandalized over the weekend.

Vandals caused several thousand dollars in damage to the old Notre Dame High School Saturday night or Sunday morning, a representative of St. Vincent De Paul parish said Monday.

Windows and doors were broken and bent inside and out of the building, which is now called the De Paul Center, said Pat Lee, who works in the church office.

Police counted 12 windows that had been broken around the building, with most of the damage centered in the activity room. A car had been driven backwards across the lawn and through glass entry doors on the center's north side.

"A whole lot of steel is bent over there," Lee said.

Southeast Missouri Crimestoppers has offered a reward of up to $1,000 for any information leading to the arrests of those involved.

Interior doors with metal bars had been broken open in and around the activity room. Unopened cans of beer, soda and an ice tea drink had been hurled through windows from the outside, police said. Some cans smashed glass in a trophy case.

Doors going downstairs from the activity room and into a concession stand area was broken open. A glass box that formerly held a fire extinguisher was also broken.

"At least the fire extinguisher wasn't there," Lee said. "They didn't have that to spread around."

No exterior door locks were broken, so it remained unclear how the vandals gained entrance, Lee said. Police detectives continuing an investigation on Monday suggested it was possible the vandals crawled through the broken windows.

While cleanup went on, nothing appeared to have been stolen, Lee said.

Since Notre Dame moved out of the old high school building in 1998, it has been used by St. Vincent De Paul for Sunday school classes, gym activities for elementary students and weekend retreats, Lee said.

The vandalism, which was reported to police Sunday morning, was a surprise, she said. It was assumed that regular police patrols and a privately hired security guard who patrols the area overnight would spot criminal activities.

Some teen-agers hang out on the center's parking lot on weekends, Lee said. The parish chose to handle that by putting out trash containers.

Now it's time to get tougher, she said.

"We're not against them having a place to go," Lee said. "But we will be chaining off the parking lots. There were no security alarms before, but we'll have them now."

The incident was the third in six months, Lee said. Break-ins occurred in May and February. A television, videocassette recorder and other items were stolen then.