EDENTON, N.C. — The Edenton Police Department is asking for the public's help in identifying a person they say vandalized more than 30 places in the town Saturday night and overnight Sunday. Edenton Police and the Town of Edenton crews cleaned the graffiti over the weekend but have not been able to identify the suspect yet.
"What makes this town great is everybody cares about the town, everybody takes care of the town, everybody pitches in, everybody's welcome here. You're not welcome here if you're gonna come in here and disrespect it," said Joe Wach, owner of The Herringbone in Edenton.
Wach is one of many residents now aware of the Edenton Police Department's call for help in identifying a person the department believes placed stickers and used some kind of paint pen to tag more than 30 places around the town.
"We were vandalized here in Edenton. Somebody went around in approximately 35, 36 different locations. They took what we believe was a paint pen of some sort, and went around and marked on a bunch of different things around town. Light poles, different things at the waterfront, utility boxes, news boxes, a mural, anything that they could find to vandalize. It caused us a lot of grief and a lot of controversy here in town," said David LaFon, chief of the Edenton Police Department.
A challenge has been finding clear video footage to identify the person. The department has a few videos of the person downtown, but a new video the department released might be key in identifying the person. The video was provided by a local resident.
"We went and looked at our street cameras, and our street cameras do pretty good at getting a lot of things, but we couldn't get a good facial shot. One of our residents last night helped us with some very good video that we didn't know that was available to us, and that's where we got this updated video. We got a good screenshot of this person, and we got good videos of them walking in and out doing their handiwork, we're very appreciative of our community," said LaFon.
The department is now actively asking the public to help find out who this person is so they can be prosecuted.
"We want our visitors and our residents to know that this is a beautiful town, and we're going to strive to keep it a beautiful town, and these kind of things will not be tolerated. And when we can find this perpetrator, we're going to do everything we can to bring them to justice and make sure that this doesn't happen again," said LaFon.
As the investigation continues, town leaders and residents are confident they'll be able to identify this person and say they are not going to let this situation take away from the special town they call home.
"It's a small town community with a very tight knit community. All with a common focus on small town living, preserving historic things and we all work together really well, and that's why this kind of thing is disruptive to that kind of community," said Wach.
Anyone with information that can help identify this person is encouraged to reach out to the Edenton Police Department at (252) 482-5144 and can monitor the department's Facebook page for updates here.
