Professional Parkway in Santa Maria is a street like many others, well maintained and rather quiet, but on Wednesday morning an act of vandalism disrupted operations at PathPoint.
"It's disheartening because you really want to be able to help people to be able to better themselves," said Christina Kirkman, Manager of Independent Living Services and Employment PathPoint Santa Maria.
PathPoint is a nonprofit that supports adults with developmental disabilities or mental illness and helps them find independence through assisting them with employment and a place to live.
On Wednesday morning path point employees discovered the vans they use for their day program, to bring individuals out into the community to places like work or the park, were vandalized.
Workers at PathPoint tell KSBY vehicles that were in the parking lot Tuesday night were broken into, and on Wednesday morning they saw many of the windows had been smashed using various items including bags of rocks.
"It looks like just from initially that they used about anything they could find," said Curt Dennett, VP of Technology and Infrastructure at PathPoint.
Damage was done but theft did not occur.
"There were different things like bags with rocks in them and different, other stuff in them. As I said, they broke the windows but nothing was taken from the vehicle," said Dennett.
Dennett says there were six vehicles involved in the incident, but the vehicles weren't the only things vandalized. Just across the street at the social security office damage was done as well.
"We saw that feces was smeared on the front door of the social security office and they very quickly cautioned everything off and had somebody come out and clean it up," said Kirkman.
This isn't the first incident of vandalism on the street. Kirkman says these issues have happened in the past with the homeless population in Santa Maria.
"A few years ago we actually had an incident where there was feces thrown at the dentist's office behind us as well," said Kirkman.
Though it is not known who carried out this act of vandalism or why PathPoint employees speculate that it was not a targeted attack.
As a result of this act of vandalism, Path Point is unable to provide community activities for the next few days.
We reached out to the Santa Maria Police Department to see if they are investigating the incident and are waiting to hear back.
