PLANO, Texas — It's unwelcome end to the year for a Plano neighborhood.
Plano police are searching for a suspect who they say broke into a storage shed and vandalized nearly a dozen homes with spray paint. Neighbors discovered random Bible verses and racial slurs graffitied on homes and cars Thursday morning.
"We've been here 45 years and this is the first time it happened," said neighbor Darryl Chance, who is white.
Chance came out Thursday morning to find someone had graffitied a racial slur on his wife's car.
"They wrote the Black word that we do not use in our house," he said.
"That was very offensive."
The vandals tagged Chance's truck with crosses and the number, "666."
He covered the racial slur and the "666" with black tape.
"I wasn't going to drive one inch with this on my cars," he said.
Whoever did the vandalism broke into Stephanie Cruz's storage shed.
The thief took two toolboxes containing tools and spray paint.
One of the toolboxes was left beside her fence under the word, "Thanks," which had been spray painted on the fence.
Cruz felt like the vandal was saying, "Thanks," for the spray paint.
"What a jerk," she said.
Plano police say a neighbor's ring camera captured images of the suspected vandal.
On the video, he can be seen walking up the driveway and then up to the camera. He looked right into the camera as he spray-painted it.
Police have that video and a big clue to the vandal's identity.
Jerry Minton, a Plano police spokesman, said it appeared the vandal randomly picked houses.
"It does not appear to be that any one particular person was targeted in the neighborhood," he said.
Stephanie Cruz and her family will welcome a new baby into our not-so-nice world next week.
"It's just a lot of hate," she said. "It's so much easier to spread love in my opinion."