Swastika on field ups 'prank' game
Courtesy photo The image of a swastika was burned into the grass on the field at Lake City High School.
COEUR d’ALENE — Vandals used gasoline or herbicide to burn letters, a swastika and a depiction of male genitalia into the grass of the Lake City High School football field this summer. Administrators have written it off as a prank.
Members of a school football team discovered the vandalism last weekend, according to the father of a player who did not want to be identified. But school officials said Wednesday that the vandalism was initially discovered last month.
Scott Maben, public information officer for the Coeur d’Alene School District, said administrators noticed the burned grass days after graduation ceremonies, but because it occurred at night, the perpetrators could not be identified from surveillance footage.
School officials did not report the incident to police, according to the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, which did not have an incident report for the vandalism.
Maben said officials wrote off the incident as a prank based upon earlier, similar incidents that occur around the time of graduation, or in the summer as football teams prepare for the upcoming season.
“They have seen the same thing in previous years,” Maben said.
Vandals use gasoline or herbicide to burn letters — often CHS, apparently referring to rival Coeur d’Alene High School — into the grass.
Officials said they were unaware a swastika had been part of the latest vandalism.
“Nothing like the swastika has happened before,” Maben said.
School maintenance workers usually use water and fertilizer to get grass to grow over the burn, but construction at Lake City High this summer has caused water outages, so repairing the field is taking longer, Maben said.
The school’s first home football game is Aug. 24.