Officials Investigate Defaced HS Football Field

An Idaho school district is investigating a case of vandalism that left a football field defaced with offensive images.

The Coeur d’Alene Press reports that pranksters used herbicide or gasoline to burn letters, a swastika and a depiction of male genitalia onto the grass of Lake City High School’s football field.

The offensive images were spotted by members of the football team just a week ago, but school officials reportedly discovered the vandalism in June — days after local graduation ceremonies.

School officials wrote the incident off as a prank because of a history of similar instances that occurred around graduation in previous years. However, pranksters had previously simply burned the letters of a rival high school. “Nothing like the swastika has happened before,” Scott Maben, the public information officer for the Coeur D’Alene School District, told the Press.

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Maben told the Spokesman-Review that the vandalism took time to develop, and it wasn’t immediately apparent what each of the damaged areas were meant to depict. The field is being repaired, but water outages caused by school construction are impacting that process.

Surveillance footage reportedly captured the perpetrators, but because the incident took place at night they were unable to be identified. However, the investigation into the vandalism is ongoing.

“If a student were found to be responsible for this vandalism, that student would be subject to our discipline policies, which could include suspension or expulsion,” Maben told the Spokesman-Review.