MIAMI COMPUTERS DESTROYED AT HIGH SCHOOL PREVIOUSLY VICTIMIZED BY VANDALS nbc6.net - News - Vandals Cause $40,000 Damage At Coral Gables High SchoolPOSTED: 5:51 pm EDT May 24, 2004
UPDATED: 6:06 pm EDT May 24, 2004

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Vandals broke into a South Florida school between Sunday night and Monday morning, smashing computers, vandalizing books and killing the school's expensive exotic fish.

The vandals also covered their tracks, taking out a surveillance camera panel that could have captured their identities and dropping the videotapes into the school’s salt-water aquariums.

They also took some fish out of the aquariums and cut their heads off, apparently with a large paper cutter, then put foam into tanks to kill the rest o the fish, according to police.

Coral Gables High School officials estimate the damage at between $40,000 and $50,000.

The school’s principal told police he left the school at 5 p.m. Sunday and found the damage when he returned to the school at 4:30 a.m. Monday.

In the library, books were strewn around the floors and aisles. There were also glow sticks left behind, apparently as a marker of the vandals’ path.

School administrators were forced to move 12 classes as a result of the damage.

Coral Gables High School Principal Alex Martinez called on the public to help identify the perpetrators.

“It's one of those issues where, you know, schools need all the help possible, especially when you acquire important items like computers and all types of technology, and then to have something as senseless as this happen,” Martinez said.

The school was the site of a similar incident in August 2003, when nine computers were stolen.

They found the culprit and his accomplices after other students and video cameras in the school spotted them.

This time, police will not have the luxury of surveillance tapes to use in their investigation. But they are hoping someone saw something, perhaps from one of the school’s athletic fields, which are used by community residents on weekends.