Fourth downtown business hit by vandals overnight

Vandals strike again, hitting now a fourth downtown business. Early Thursday morning, a man called Columbia Police about an incident at Lakota Coffee Company on Ninth Street.

Vandals smashed in two front windows and the main door, as well as throwing paint on the awning of the business.

ABC 17 reported last week about vandals breaking windows at Coffee Zone and Iron Tiger in the last two weeks. On Friday, ABC 17 learned Gunther’s Games front door was also smashed in last week.

It’s because of the paint damage on the awning that Andrew DuCharme, general manager of Lakota Coffee, believes the attack was premeditated.

“Nobody really goes to bars with paint in their purse or in their wallet or whatever to sit there and go vandalize after they get drunk,” DuCharme said. “Broken glass, I would associate that with someone getting drunk and doing something stupid, but the paint is very weird.”

DuCharme said security footage inside the business shows the incident happening just before 2 a.m. Damages reached an estimated $10,000, according to DuCharme.

“We saw glass shards on our awning so that kind of indicated to us, as well as some of the people that were cleaning it up, that they were putting it into glass bottles and throwing it up onto the brick,” DuCharme said.

DuCharme told ABC 17 police used the shards to gather fingerprints for the investigation.

“We hope to see more police patrolling the streets at night,” DuCharme said. “There’s a lot of drunk people after the bars at night, and I just hope these problems stop.”

Columbia Police told ABC 17 on Friday all of the incidents could be related, but they emphasize are all still ongoing investigations. No leads or arrests have been made in any of the cases.