Vandals target Gastonia church

GASTONIA, N.C. — Church members worked on Tuesday to wash away some of the graffiti left by vandals at Friendly Baptist Church.

Someone wrote the word “fake” in large letters near the front entrance, and it appears they tried to set the siding on fire.

“It breaks your heart,” church member Elizabeth Arrowood said. “It just breaks your heart."

Hazel Owens found the mess on Monday when she checked the church's mailbox.

“It's awful,” Owens said. “It's just awful.”

The vandals also knocked over the Ten Commandments monument in front of the church. Church members lifted it, but it’s chipped and curse words were written beside the code of Christian living.

“The church is God's holy ground,” church member Ray Owens said.

Owens said his fellow church members have always been respectful to the church and welcoming to visitors.

“We have got a small church over here, and we take pride in our church,” he said.

He was stunned at the misspelled slur toward Asians on the side of the church, which has no Asian members.

“They should be made to come back and clean their own mess up,” Ray Owens said.

He thinks the vandals should be forced to do other jobs around the church as part of their punishment.

“If they don't get right with the Lord, they are going to get punished worse than anything we can do,” Hazel Owens said.

Church members Eyewitness News talked to fear the vandals know the church or something about church members.  The pastor's brother lives in the house on the north side of the church.  Most of the damage is on the south side or in an area where neither he nor his wife could see the vandals if they looked out of the windows of their home.

WSOC