Vandals strike west Fort Worth church garden 3 times

Vandals struck an Episcopal church in far west Fort Worth three times this week, taking the head and a hand of a statue of Jesus and stealing a marble angel and memorial plaques from a garden.

“It really hit people hard,” said Devan Breedlove, a member of the Church of Christ the King & All Saints, a picturesque white frame building at 3290 Lackland Road.

The vandals appear to have used rocks to mutilate the statue of Jesus.

“The head and the right hand were missing,” Breedlove said. “Whoever damaged the statue also took a marble angel that was on top of the columbarium.”

That damage was discovered Monday.

On Monday night, Breedlove set up a video surveillance camera. The vandals returned Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

They made off with 15 of 24 metal memorial plaques, said Steve Murray, senior warden of the church’s vestry.

The plaques are worth about $190 each, he said. Replacing the statue will cost an estimated $2,700.

Thieves also took a brass plate embossed with a Bible verse that covered the opening to a columbarium. The ashes of several parishioners are interred there. Thieves left the ashes open to the elements, WFAA reported.

“It is a violation of the dead,” Breedlove said. “It is coming up on Easter, and it is making it even harder.”

On Friday, the church received a call from someone claiming to want to return the plaques, Breedlove said. The caller said he wasn’t involved in the incident and had left some plaques behind a Catholic church. Breedlove turned the information over to police.

The case was assigned to investigators Thursday, a police spokesman said. No further information was made available Friday.

“We are just hoping for a good resolution,” Murray said. “If we got those plaques back, it would be very good.”

This story was originally published March 20, 2015 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Vandals strike west Fort Worth church garden 3 times."