JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – Vandals broke into the Jacksonville Beach Pier on Monday night and did more than $1,000 worth of damage.
Workers at the pier said that after they closed Monday, someone went out to the pier and shook some of the fish cleaning stations, damaging the pipes.
That meant fisherman found no water pressure Tuesday morning when they got out to the pier.
“It’s very frustrating, of course,” fisherman Fred King said. “When you come to fish, you're expecting to catch, so having the cleaning stations is very handy for us to clean the fish and be done with it.”
Police said someone hopped the fence overnight at three different cleaning stations.
As workers got out to the pier Tuesday morning, they noticed that something wasn’t right. Damaged trash cans led them to look further, and they found damaged pipes at the cleaning stations.
“They use the water to wash their hands, to clean their fish,” fisherman Miles Stonesifer said. “They use the water if they have to thaw their bait out. It’s very important on a fishing pier. Just to vandalize something, it doesn’t make sense.”
Jacksonville Beach police said they got a call about the damage early Tuesday morning, but surveillance cameras at the pier weren’t working, so right now, they don’t have any suspects. The damage has left people wondering how this could happened.
“It’s a shame. It’s costing the taxpayers money and ruining the sport for people like us,” Stonesifer said.
“Hopefully, the fees won’t go up for us to cover the cost of fixing that,” King said.
According to the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, the estimated damage is about $900 to the three cleaning stations and another $300 for the cost of the damage to the trash cans.
Wednesday, Greg Cause offered to fix the damaged pipes at the pier, but the Public Works Department was already reviewing the damage.
