They beheaded Santa and slashed Frosty.
In less than an hour, Saturday night, teen-aged vandals ripped through Virginia Run and nearby communities, slashing nearly three dozen inflatable Christmas decorations. Reindeers, snowmen and polar bears alike all fell victim to the marauding teens.
"Our cul-de-sac has lots of young kids, and they love the inflatable displays," said Marty Clarke of White Chapel Court in Virginia Run. "Everybody was devastated."
THE INFLATABLES range from about 8-12 feet high and cost $40-$80 apiece. Clarke put up five in his front yard, last weekend: Santa and reindeer, a snowman, a polar bear, a penguin and a triple treat of a Christmas tree with a Santa and snowman attached.
Then Saturday night, around 9:20 p.m., he got a call from his next-door neighbor alerting him to the vandalism. "He said, 'Our inflatables are going down,'" said Clarke. "I went out and saw mine were all slashed, and I called 911. Within 30 minutes, over 30 of them were slashed with a razor blade."
Police responded quickly and, said Clarke, seven Fairfax County police cruisers were soon combing the neighborhood, looking for the vandals. "As the officers were taking my report, other [similar] reports were coming in on the police radio," he said.
On Tuesday, police said they only heard of eight homes vandalized and 13 inflatables destroyed. But residents say the totals are much higher, and police acknowledge that not everyone victimized may have made a report.
Clarke's neighbor said he saw teen-agers go by in a dark-colored, pickup truck with off-road lights mounted on the roof. Then around 9:30 p.m., Holly and Pete Cameron of Saddle Downs Place in Virginia Run nearby reported seeing another group of teens slash inflatables in that neighborhood and drive away in a red, Honda Prelude.
Holly saw the car first. Then, she said, Pete "saw it and another one come onto the street and stop in front of a neighbor's yard, slash their Santa's head off and run. He chased them, but they got away."
Then Holly noticed a house in the nearby Hunt Chase community with several of its inflatables down and damaged. "I thought it was pathetic that someone has nothing better to do [than this]," she said. The Camerons' inflatables weren't destroyed but, said Holly, that's because "ours were still in the garage; they weren't inflated, yet."
Seven inflatables were hit in the Hunt Chase community, and still more along Hidden Canyon Road and Surrey House Way in Virginia Run. Said Clarke: "Neighbors called each other to warn them to look out for their inflatables."
Around 9:45 p.m., Pete Cameron knocked on the door of Boris Elias' home on Saddle Downs Place to break the sad tidings that Elias' $75, 8-foot Santa had been cruelly beheaded.
"THEY APPARENTLY wanted his hat for a trophy," said Elias. "Then they slashed his stomach, so there was no hope for him." He said his children, 7 and 11, wondered why anyone would do such a terrible thing — and so did he. Said Elias, "I got in trouble when I was a boy, but I don't know about cutting up Santa ... I hope they don't come back."
He at first thought the vandals had just targeted his family. So in a way, he said, "I was almost relieved to find out that others were vandalized, as well." And although police haven't made any arrests, yet, he's hopeful that "maybe someone will tell on someone, and they'll all get caught."
Meanwhile, the slashers struck on Surrey House Way around 10 p.m. Dottie McNamara looked out her window and discovered that the Santa and snowman in the front yard across the street from hers had been felled. "I thought the wind had blown them over," she said. Then she looked at the 12-foot snowman in her side yard and saw that it, too, had been mercilessly violated.
Her triple Santa, snowman and Christmas tree inflatable in her front yard had also met the same fate. "They started at the beard and gouged them," said McNamara. "They even sliced the things that were holding them down. I think we were the last street hit. They were big boys — a lady saw them take off in a blue truck."
Nonetheless — just as the South vowed to rise again after Sherman torched Atlanta — the plucky people of Virginia Run were determined not to let the senseless acts of a few spoil their Christmas holidays. Elias has since replaced his Santa with a new one and — just for good measure — a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, too.
And as if to say, "Ha, Ha! Take that, you big bullies!" other residents all over the area are patching up their victimized decorations and placing them back outside to once more bring cheer to their neighborhoods. Said Clarke: "As sad and destructive as it was, the good side is that my neighbor, Margaret Perkins, took my five inflatables and my neighbors' one and sewed them up."
And that was no easy task. Said Clarke: "Some of the displays had seven slashes, two feet long." He said they're made out of rip-stop, parachute cloth with a sturdy, fine mesh, and Perkins did a terrific job of operating on them.
"The following evening, we had them back up," he said. "They were battle-scarred and wounded, but they were there. Other neighbors mended theirs with duct tape. They're not pretty — but they're back up and standing tall."
Perkins said she was happy to help out because Clarke's been "a great neighbor" to her family. "Marty and I have a friendly competition of inflatables," she said. "I have four and he has five; we'd get one and he'd get one. He was so proud of them — they were so cute. And it just broke our hearts [to see what happened to them]."
She said both Clarke and another neighbor called to warn her and her husband to protect their inflatables. But, she said, because a police officer lives nearby and his cruiser was parked outside, theirs weren't damaged.
STILL, SAID Perkins, it was "brutal" to see the wounds inflicted on the big, happy decorations. "They took a knife and slit right down the stomach," she said. "It's very mean. It makes me sick that kids can be so destructive to maliciously stab things that represent the spirit of Christmas."
She estimates it took 1 1/2 hours or more to repair all the rips. "You'd fix them, blow them up and find another hole," she explained. "Then the same thing would happen, all over again."
Two girls, 7 and 10, live in the house next to Clarke, and their snowman was slashed. "They came over while I was working on it," said Perkins. "They were so excited that it came back [to 'life']. My 10-year-old daughter Annie was my helper. She'd hold up the thing while I scooted it under the machine and sewed it."
As for McNamara — a 72-year-old grandmother — she got downright angry about the vandalism. Then, with true Southern grit, she, too, decided not to let the bad guys get the best of her. "I was so upset," she said. "Then I thought, 'Those little stinkers — my snowman is gonna stand again!'"
So she duct-taped it and placed it back outside. "Everyone cheered when it went up," she said. Then others in the neighborhood followed suit with their injured inflatables. "It was kind of a team effort," said McNamara. "Everyone in our corner was happy to see them again. They're bandaged up — and my snowman has a patch over his eye — but they're up."
Her own children are grown, but she put up the inflatables for her grandchildren, as well as for the kids in the neighborhood. "I paid $80 last year for my snowman," she said. "But it's not the money. It's just the fact that [the vandals] tried to ruin Christmas for everyone, when it's a time when we should be of good cheer."
"It's Christmas," continued McNamara. "People are supposed to be happy. And to have teen-agers come through and do this — it's just not nice." Furthermore, she added, if they're doing something like this now, "What will they do when they grow up? It's very sad."
In a way, she said, residents repaired their inflatables as a brazen act of defiance illustrating their indomitable strength of spirit. "I wanted the teen-agers to see them standing again," said McNamara. "And if they come back and destroy my snowman again, I'll just tape him up again."