Teenagers Charged With Damaging a Christmas Decoration Put Up for Boy With Deadly Cancer

The inflatable Santas were put up months before Christmas so a toddler with brain cancer could enjoy the holiday spirit. But for the past week, the outdoor decorations in a Cincinnati-area neighborhood have been mysteriously slashed, damaged and vandalized, police said.

Residents started waiting up at night, keeping an eye out more during the day, and sharing messages on social media.

Then came a break in the case. The police said two boys, 16 and 17, were arrested and charged Thursday with criminal damaging of an inflatable Santa on one property in the Colerain Township neighborhood.

“This was a minispree of criminal damaging,” Chief Mark C. Denney of the Colerain Police Department said in an interview. “It put a negative spin on everything going on in that neighborhood.”

The misdemeanor charges could be followed by other charges, he added. The two teenagers were to be released into the custody of their parents, he said. The police had not yet identified a motive. While in custody, the boys “admitted” to slashing another inflatable decoration nearby on Sept. 12, according to a police report.

The arrests in the case came when a resident called the police late Wednesday night after his home’s surveillance system captured video footage of a teenager entering a yard and stabbing an inflatable Santa. The police got another call of vandalism in progress as well. After a chase on foot, officers arrested two boys, according to a police report.

The neighborhood underwent its holiday transformation after the parents of a 2-year-old who reside there were recently told their son’s rare form of brain cancer meant he had two months to live. The toddler, Brody Allen, loves Christmas so much that his parents, Shilo and Todd Allen, decided to put up a tree and decorations to celebrate early. As word of their plans spread through a Facebook group, their neighbors followed suit.

The houses that surrounded the Allens’ home in a cul-de-sac and a few down the street decorated their property so Brody, who likes to sit in the front yard, could see the festivities.

There was an inflatable Minnie and Mickey Mouse, a snowman and a Christmas tree. Giant Santas swayed above rooftops. Blowup polar bears, candy canes, strings of light and other wintry figures created an early holiday scene. Then, last week, a neighbor’s Santa Claus was slashed.

“He was really sad,” McKenzie Allen, 21, said, describing her brother Brody’s reaction. “He calls Santa ‘ho ho’ and he said, ‘Oh no, ho ho broke!'”

The neighbor, Alisha Lynn, was getting her children ready for school when she noticed through a window that a Santa balloon had deflated into a puddle of plastic on the lawn.

“They gutted the stomach,” Lynn said. “And then they sliced it sideways and up and down.”

“It broke my heart in pieces,” she said.

Neighbors helped patched the holes, and the Santa rose again. But the Santa was cut again, and an inflatable polar bear was also stabbed, she said.

“They took their time and cut squares out of it,” she said.

Decorations in other yards were also vandalized. Neighbors started sharing information about the episodes. The police organized a community meeting Tuesday, and deployed undercover and uniformed officers in stakeouts, Denney said.

Then late Wednesday, one resident’s surveillance system revealed a teenager had sneaked into the yard and stabbed an inflatable Santa that was decorated as if wearing military-style gear. The resident’s son, Juan Reiter, 39, posted the video on Facebook.

Juan’s father, George Reiter, called the police. The two teenagers were arrested at about 3 a.m. Thursday after the foot chase.

Holiday decorations in Brody’s neighborhood have been repaired or replaced. When he saw a Santa flying again next door, “he was super happy,” Allen said. “He wanted to hug it and he just sat in the grass and stared.”

She said the family had told him as little as possible about what happened because he is so young. “Someone broke ho ho,” Allen said they told him. “But that is OK.”