Columbia man ticketed in church window damage

A 20-year-old Columbia man was ticketed last week after a video surfaced on social media showing a man throwing an object through a downtown church window.

Ryan P. Stipanovich was issued a summons for misdemeanor first-degree property damage and ordered to appear on the charge in city court. The officer wrote the ticket Friday, a day after a video was shared by a Twitter account showing a man throwing an object through the window of the Missouri United Methodist Church.

Coach Odom needs to save this man a scholarship pic.twitter.com/ZdGythBEr4

— Barstool Mizzou (@BarstoolMizzou) August 22, 2019

The church is on the National Register of Historic Places. A church spokeswoman told ABC 17 News last week that rules governing historic properties might make replacing the window more difficult than it might otherwise be.

In an incident report, Columbia Police Department Officer Brad Anderson wrote that the citation was tied to the video and the person ticketed is the suspect in the church vandalism.

The video appears to show someone on a balcony of an apartment at the Brookside complex across the street from the church throwing an object through the window. A spokesman for Brookside said last week that the tenants in that apartment had been evicted after the video was posted.

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