Office workers arrived at Christ the King Church in Bayberry the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 19, to discover the church grounds torn up by what appeared to be a pickup truck driving on the lawn, according to New York State Troopers who investigated the scene.
Business manager Tom Cuskey, who also serves as a deacon at the church, said he’s never seen damage this substantial in all his time at Christ the King.
“I’ve only worked here a year and a half, but I’ve been a member here for 30 years, so I go back a ways. I don’t recall anything quite as significant as this,” Cuskey said. “Typically if somebody’s just cutting the corner, they drive across the grass. This was intentional. They were swinging the wheel around. You could tell the way it’s dug up.”
Several deep ruts appeared in the green area between the church building and Cherry Tree Road overnight. Cuskey said the NYS Trooper who responded to the church’s call Wednesday morning said the size of the ruts and the tread marks appeared to belong to a large vehicle.
“I’d say a pickup truck or something, but that’s a guess,” Cuskey said.
While this is the worst damage the church has seen due to reckless driving, it’s not the first time church property has been torn up.
“In the winter time primarily, because of our parking lot being in the middle of a residential area, people come in,” Cuskey said. “When it snows, they drive and do donuts. We’ve had people cut through the green area when there’s been snow on it, because it’s been slippery.”
State police are interviewing neighbors, and the church has reached out via Facebook to see if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary the night of the 18th. The church does plan to press charges because of the extent of the damage.
“We have wonderful volunteers here. They’re great about helping with the grounds, but this really goes beyond what I think a group of people could do with wheel barrows and top soil,” Cuskey said. “Some of these ruts are pretty deep, and they’re big.”
While the church is insured through the Syracuse Diocese, Christ the King also has a high deductible — Cuskey said it’s around $2,500 — so he wasn’t sure how much of the repair would actually be covered.
“We would hope that they could be held responsible for the financial part of the damage,” he said.
Cuskey said he wasn’t optimistic that the perpetrator would be apprehended, but he still thought it was important to get the message about the vandalism out to the rest of Bayberry.
“I think it’s good for folks in the neighborhood to be aware and that we all watch out for one another. The United Church of Christ is our neighbor just down on the corner. They easily could become targets of something like this too, as anybody in the neighborhood could,” he said. “We like to be good neighbors. We love the people of Bayberry. If we can work together and keep it a safer place, it’s always a good thing.”
