Police look for motive in memorial vandalism
Cops say suspect was angered by anti-gun banner
Vodka and pro-gun sentiments may have spurred a couple into vandalizing the mass shooting memorial at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, according to police reports.
A memorial banner with an image of a rifle and a red circle and slash mark over it had been taken down, along with poignant mementos like teddy bears and poems, deputies said.
Michael Shawn Kennedy, 37, of Hollywood, and Kara O’Neil, 40, of Fulton, N.Y., were arrested late Sunday on suspicion of removing or disfiguring a tomb or a monument, a felony offense.
During a court hearing Monday afternoon, Broward Judge Kim Theresa Mollica ordered a $1,000 bond for Kennedy. On Tuesday, the judge set the same bond for O’Neil, and ordered them both to stay away from the campus.
As he was being arrested, Kennedy said, “I ripped down the anti-gun banner because I am pro-gun,” according to a deputy’s report.
Witnesses told deputies they
also saw Kennedy ripping down posters and pulling items from crosses at the Parkland campus, a report said.
The tokens of love and mourning were part of a tribute at the school to the 17 students and staffers killed and the 17 injured in Parkland on Feb. 14.
A deputy saw Kennedy placing a bundle of pinwheel lawn ornaments in the back of the couple’s Cadillac, which had an expired tag and was parked in front of a No Parking, No Stopping Anytime sign. Kennedy told a deputy, “I was taking them out of the car to make a memorial.”
A half-empty bottle of vodka sat in a cooler of ice on the front passenger seat. The couple appeared to be intoxicated and were belligerent to officers, according to an arrest report, which did not describe whether they had been tested for alcohol consumption.
The witnesses told investigators they saw O’Neil carrying a teddy bear. She told a deputy, “Oh, we were going to make a memorial of our own at the high school,” the report said.
But deputies didn’t believe the couple and wrote that the items were inscribed and clearly marked and were placed at the site by other people, and not O’Neil or Kennedy.
The items that were allegedly stolen — including the banner; three bears; a Parkland 2017 basketball trophy for first place; framed poems; lawn ornaments; a red stone with the phrase “Never Again” on it and American flags — were found in the back seat of the Cadillac, according to reports and photographs released Wednesday by the sheriff ’s office.
A shadowbox held a picture of each person who was murdered, an image of an eagle with its head down that represented the school’s mascot and a border of tiny silver angels. On the back it’s inscribed, “Dedicated to MSD, from [Pompano Beach High School] NHS,” signed by Dr. Sandy Melillo and many others.
It is unclear what Kennedy, who is unemployed, and O’Neil, a computer software programmer who recently moved to South Florida, may have wanted to do with the items that represent so much to the community that a museum and digital archive may be built.
Those efforts will be to remember the lives lost when an ex-student brought an AR-15 to school and opened fire on former classmates and staffers.
“I’m an attorney and like to wait until I have the evidence before I make any kind of snap judgment and I reserve my right to wait to judge this,” said Parkland Commissioner Ken Cutler. “If their motivation was either an attempt to deface, destroy or demolish these mementos or, even worse in my mind, that they were doing it for commercial gain, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The alleged vandalism of the memorial to the dead has not spurred a race to collect what remains.
That massive task was already planned for today and is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. The banners that hang from fences around the campus will remain in place, at the request of the school, Cutler said.
“But anything that can be destroyed by the sun, wind and rain, we want to preserve and protect those items,” Cutler said.
Jeff Schwartz, president of the Parkland Historical Society, said between 1,500 and 2,000 tributes that were placed near the Parkland Recreational and Enrichment Center and amphitheater in Pine Trails Park were already collected earlier this month.
Those items that document this grim chapter in the city’s history are boxed and being kept in secure, climate-controlled storage facilities.
Citing Sunday night’s alleged vandalism, Cutler declined to say where those facilities are. City administrators are talking with a local university about the possibility of using its conservation storage facility, “but it’s not definitive yet,” Cutler said.
“The point is to approach this with reverence and to protect and preserve these memories of the victims of this tragic incident,” he said.
Cutler said he hopes that today about 40 people will help collect all of the tributes that hug the school’s campus.
“We’re still hearing from people who may volunteer,” Cutler said about the ambitious goal of gathering it all up in a single day.
Schwartz, the historian, said there is a a sense of urgency because “The stuff is not in good shape, so we’re hoping to get it out of there.”
He said of the alleged vandalism, “It’s overwhelming. For somebody to steal from a memorial for children who were shot, it’s just overwhelming.”