Vandals cut though a chain-link fence Sunday night at the Van Nuys Airport near Los Angeles and sprayed three corporate jets with graffiti. It was the first time vandals have struck at the airfield since a similar incident two years ago. The jets were parked on a ramp outside of a hangar. “This happened in a darkened area of the airport,” said Patrick Gannon, chief of the Los Angeles airport police. “We are going to take a harder look at the lighting in the areas where this happened … It is embarrassing. It is not something we want to be happening at our airports.” No one was ever arrested or charged after the earlier incident.
Estimates for repairing this week’s damage, reported by the news media, ranged from a few thousand dollars per jet to up to a million dollars. Blue and black spray paint was used to write names and numbers across the jets. The jets were quickly moved inside of hangars, and were identified in news reports only as two Gulfstreams and a Boeing. Gannon said his staff will work with “graffiti experts” from the Los Angeles Police Department to try to identify who vandalized the jets.
