By EMILY SPARACINO / Staff Writer

CHELSEA – Authorities are seeking assistance from the public in finding the suspect or suspects responsible for vandalizing a church’s sign in Chelsea.

St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church’s LED sign on the corner of Shelby County 39 and King’s Home Drive sustained about $4,937 worth of damage in the early morning hours of Sept. 6, Shelby County Deputy Debbie Sumrall said in an Oct. 6 phone interview.

“It was reported to us on Sept. 6,” Sumrall said of the SCSO, which is handling the investigation. “That night, we had some other criminal mischief in the area. Nobody saw anything, but there was some other mischief done in the area.”

Jay Jerman, head of the St. Catherine’s property development committee, said the sign is designed to be an entranceway to the 20-acre spread of land that will house the church’s future building.

“It appears that someone took a piece of cinder block and slammed it into the front of the sign and drug it across the front of the sign and did that five or six times,” Jerman said. “That sign had only been up about a month when it was damaged. We spent a year and a half working on collecting the money to build the thing. It really upset folks.”

The incident is being treated as a felony since damages totaled more than $2,500, Jerman said.

Investigators are unsure of the number of people involved and currently do not have any leads in the case, according to Sumrall.

The first person to report information leading to an arrest of the person or people responsible for the vandalism will qualify for a $500 reward.

Anyone with information regarding the case should contact Investigator Andrew Stanley at 670-6173.

“When things happen in the middle of the night, and we don’t have any witnesses, and we have very little evidence, we rely on someone in the community to come forward,” Sumrall said.