BATH

A Bath man said someone took his patriotic lawn ornaments last week and those of a neighbor, leaving the more expensive ornaments.

Dean Caton, a Vietnam veteran, said he had some red, white and blue solar lights in his yard on Denny Road, and had just put out a small, inexpensive American flag Thursday, June 5 in honor of D-Day, which was Friday, June 6. His neighbor also had some red, white and blue lights taken. The neighbor was outside Thursday night and the ornaments were still there, but when Caton got up at 5:30 a.m. Friday they were gone.

Caton said he called police. Taken were relatively inexpensive items; it wasn’t a matter of cost, he said, but the fact that someone targeted the patriotic items.

“It’s rather un-American,” Caton said. He planned to get a new flag from the American Legion and would try to find new lights and have them back out. And then, “I will be sitting watching guard.”

He said there were some bare-footed prints in the mud he noticed on the Friday, so he thinks it may have been children who nabbed the items. With the remnants of a swastika found on stones at the Waterfront Park earlier made with an unknown substance since washed away by rain, “one cannot help but wonder if they are connected,” Caton said.

Bath Police Lt. Robert Savary said, “I can say with confidence” there is not an epidemic of non-American vandalism or thefts occurring around the city and doesn’t believe the two are related. However, if the trend continues “we’ll reevaluate.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com

The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor
We believe a community must be informed to thrive. bowdoin.edu