The people caught on video soaping the fountain at Marie Canine Plaza may have thought it was a harmless late-night prank, but the plaza’s caretakers aren’t laughing.
“There is a tape. There is a camera here,” Sue Lucas, program manager of Crawfordsville Main Street, said Friday morning as she used a long net to scrape out the foam that overflowed from the fountain and sent suds bouncing around the plaza and across the street.
Cleaning up the mess likely won’t come cheap if the fountain has to be drained and refilled and if the foam overtaxed the fountain’s pump, which had recently been replaced.
“A couple of people have advised we just shut it down for the season, but we’re going to keep this open as long as possible because it’s 2020 and it’s going to be a long winter,” Lucas said, “and people enjoy the water feature and we want them to enjoy that for years to come, so we’re going to try to get it running again.”
Main Street maintains the plaza for the City of Crawfordsville, which owns the grounds.
“Hopefully we can get it running,” Lucas added. “But it’s not a harmless prank and everybody else can move on except those whose responsibility it is to take care of public spaces.”
Around 2:30 a.m. Friday, the plaza’s security camera captured three people in the plaza who left and returned a short time later as suds filled the fountain, Crawfordsville Police Chief Mike Norman said. Investigators are trying to identify the people in the video.
Anyone with information is asked to call Officer Michael Plant at 765-362-3762, ext. 169.
Charges could range from a class B misdemeanor to a Level 6 felony depending on the cost of the damage and cleanup, Norman said.
