Howard County police said the destruction of a church?s memorial garden could be linked to Drano being poured on a slide at a nearby playground.
Members of the Linden-Linthicum United Methodist Church in Clarksville discovered their memorial garden was vandalized Saturday night, Howard police said.
That same night, a mixture of hand lotion and Drano was poured onto a slide at a playground on Whistling Winds Walk in Clarksville. Rolls of paper used for printing receipts at cash registers were unraveled on the equipment and in trees, said police spokeswoman Cpl. Jennifer Reidy-Hall.
“Obviously it was a very potentially dangerous situation,” she said.
Because of the cleaning agent?s acidity, “Drano is very dangerous to children,” she said.
In another incident, two Essex teenagers, Kyle B. Meredith and Mateusz S. Dybala, both 16, were charged in April with burning a 2-year-old Baltimore boy by placing acid on a playground slide at Victory Villa Elementary School in Baltimore County.
Payton Potochney suffered severe second- and third-degree burns, and doctors at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Hospital performed double skin graft surgery on both of his legs.
The Howard community was upset by the weekend?s events, and students from River Hill High School in Clarksville are devoting their Saturday to cleaning up the mess at the church?s memorial garden, the Rev. Bryant Oskvig said.
A fence was kicked over, benches broken, paving stones tossed into the parking lot and trees tagged with graffiti, Oskvig said.
The garden was created several years ago by community members to honor deceased loved ones. The garden has been refurbished several times by Eagle Scouts.
“No one has been arrested, and we just think it?s mischief,” Oskvig said.
