At least four Juneau churches and a business had break-ins or vandalism between Monday night and Tuesday morning, and the Juneau Police Department thinks they may be related.
In a news release, the department says the first report came from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Lemon Creek area on Monday night. They estimate $10,000 in damage was done to 21 windows.
Later that night, police responded to a call about suspicious activity at the Juneau Church of Christ off Mendenhall Loop Road. They found two broken windows.
Police started checking up on other churches and, after midnight, found two more broken windows at the Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church. Inside, they found 24-year-old Juneau woman Alesa Abbott and arrested her. She was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor for burglary, theft and criminal mischief.
On Tuesday morning, more broken window reports came from a business near Hospital Drive and the Juneau Christian Center.
Nathaniel Habeger, an associate pastor there, detailed the damage.
“We came into our offices Tuesday morning to discover that our front – we have four front doors, two sets of double doors, and those doors each have a pane of glass in them and one set of them, both panes of glass, looked like they’d been smashed with a large rock or some kind of a large object,” Habeger said. “They didn’t shatter through, but they were splintered quite extensively.”
Habeger said it’s been duct-taped up for now. He thinks it’ll cost several hundred dollars to repair.
Police noted Abbott had a crowbar on her when she was arrested. She was not charged in four of the five incidents, which are under investigation. But police did call her “a person of interest” in them.
Abbott had a court appearance Wednesday afternoon and bonded out of custody Tuesday. She could not be reached for comment.
