The mind behind defacing holy ground

By Steph Crosier

TRENTON (15/11/2012) Left to right: George Heacock, Paul Adams, and Rose Anne Smith visited the Afghanistan Repatriation Memorial on a chilly Thursday morning to make sure the vandals didn’t cause too much damage. Photo by Steph Crosier

140 times he’s seen families cry. 140 times he’s raised flags along Hamilton Road. 140 times he’s watched another dead soldier drive by in a black hearse. The Afghanistan Repatriation Memorial is holy ground to him.

George Heacock served in the military for 35 years. When he heard that the brand new memorial at Bain Park in Trenton had been vandalized, he had to come down on a chilly morning to check the damage. Almost shaking with anger, he said he couldn’t understand why anyone would touch such a holy area.

“I just don’t understand it, I don’t,” said Heacock. “This is a place for people to pay homage. They died in this generation for the next generation.”

When fallen soldiers came home to Trenton from Afghanistan for the first time Heacock came to support along the road until it got too crowded. So instead he lined Hamilton Road by sticking over 50 small Canadian flags into the guardrails leading down to Sydney Street.

“140,” said Heacock. “140 times I’ve seen them come home for the last time.”

Just four days after the memorial, created entirely through donations, was unveiled on Nov. 10 an unknown male went to the monument and pulled out some flowers surrounding it. It was early Wednesday morning around 12:30 a.m. where no one was around, but the camera was watching.

A security camera caught the entire act as the man yanked the chrysanthemums from the soil and threw them on the ground. John Williams, mayor of Quinte West, has seen the video and is disgusted.

“I think anyone who does this type of stuff doesn’t have much of a conscience,” said Williams. “This isn’t acceptable in any type thing. So we’ll find this guy and hopefully set an example with him. There’s just no excuse for this type of thing at all.”

Williams actually wants to take a more rudimentary approach to punishing the victim.

“What I think we should do, once we get a hold of him, is maybe put him downtown, and do what they did in the states,” said Williams. “Put a little board around his neck, and have him stand in the middle of town, and admit what he did.”

Rose Anne Smith came with Heacock to see the memorial Thursday, to try to comprehend what happened.

“I just don’t understand any type of vandalism, its someone’s property,” said Smith. “And this wasn’t built with city money or government money, it was donations, fundraisers… what do they get out it?”

Jessica Ford, psychotherapist at Trenton’s J. A. Ford Group, who studied at the University of Chicago, said that if she had to create a profile of the suspect, she would say he might have a personality disorder that causes rebellion.

“I think you need to look at the underlying issue that this person mind be contending with,” said Ford. “This kind of action is a way of expressing rage and anger.”

Ford said it could be someone who is angry at the military, at what this memorial represents, or it could be angry from a loss in the Afghan situation. But Ford said we’d never really understand until we know the underlying factors.

Ford says that chemical imbalances in the brain can cause depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, but she doesn’t believe that is the case in this profile.

“More likely it would be a personality disorder,” said Ford.  “Which includes anti-social behaviour which can take on acts of aggression — and this is an act of aggression.”

The suspect may be in search of power, and this is way to get it. Ford said it more likely something else in addition to the search of power.

“Its more of a release,” said Ford. “ When someone gets really angry and throws something it an external release of anger… it is an issue of control ‘I’m going to show you that I can control this, I can do whatever I want.’”

Not everyone is so sympathetic.

“I know what I want to do with the a–hole,” said Heacock. “But it’s probably not allowed”

The male suspect is described as 5’8”-5’10” with a slim build. He was wearing light coloured jeans, light coloured bomber jacket with hood, a dark ball hat, and work boots.

Constable Dave Ludington of Quinte West OPP asks the suspect to turn himself in or for the public assist in his capture by calling the Quinte West detachment or Crime Stoppers.

With files from Sean Macey and Marc Venema