Historic Pleasantview School trashed during break-in

POST FALLS — A historic schoolhouse in Post Falls was trashed during a break-in discovered Aug. 16.

Cindy Mead found the damage that evening when she went to Pleasantview School for a Post Falls Historical Society meeting.

“They turned off all of our power,” Mead said Monday. “They discharged the fire extinguisher. They got in that cupboard and found the old raffle tickets and they got in a tote for our breakfast supplies. They got the napkins out and tried to use those to light a fire."

Several small fires were lit throughout the dining room and the adjacent room, using matches and rolls of raffle tickets. Matches were struck and thrown onto a table, burning holes in the table cover. A desk was rifled through. A mug was shattered on the floor. The front panel was ripped off of a piano. A glass cabinet was smashed. A box of antique books is missing.

“My first reaction was I was very angry,” said Mead, who is a member of the Pleasantview Community Association. “You try to preserve some history and make it a place where people can come and use it. I was angry, but grateful it wasn’t worse."

“And they didn’t catch the building on fire,” Pleasantview Community Association President Kathy Darrar said. "It’s just destruction. It's total destruction."

It is assumed the alarm sounded when the intruder or intruders entered, but it was turned off when the power was cut. Food the Pleasantview Community Association was going to use for its fall Cowboy Breakfast fundraiser had to be thrown out when the freezer lost power. The all-volunteer association maintains the building and conducts repairs when necessary.

Pleasantview School at 18724 W. Riverview Drive was constructed in 1910 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a two-story masonry structure with two classrooms on the second floor, a small kitchen, a dining room and a small auditorium on the ground floor. It is one of the few remaining early school structures in Kootenai County.

A report of the break-in has been filed with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, which is leading the investigation. Lt. Justin Arts said there was no sign of forced entry. Mead and Darrar said where the person or people broke in has since been reinforced and secured.

"We located a few bloody napkins," Arts said. "At some point, someone bled, so that has all been collected for evidence, including the fire extinguisher for fingerprints."

The blood on the napkin will be tested for DNA evidence, Arts said.

"The crimes we are investigating are arson in the third degree, burglary and malicious injury to property," he said. "This type of behavior seems mischievous. We would lean toward looking at people associated with the school, but we don’t have a reason to suspect any of those people. It's an open investigation right now."

Mead estimated the destruction would cost between $500 and $600 to repair and replace everything.

“The value of people’s time to do all that is a lot more. We’re all volunteering to do this,” Darrar said.

She said incidents like this are frustrating.

"We spend a lot of time here," Darrar said. "We spend a lot of time preserving this building and taking care of it. To have people not see that and think it’s just a place to play and destroy is really, really hard. That’s really hard. A lot of us have decades invested in this building."

She emphasized the importance of Pleasantview School and how it is one of the few historic buildings left in Post Falls.

She has a message for the burglars: “Stay away. Don’t come back. We don’t appreciate what you’re doing at all.”

"This is not a playhouse," Darrar said. "This is a nationally registered historical building. This is not for you to play in."