Suspects in downtown graffiti vandalism quickly identified, charged with public's help

LACONIA — The police chief is crediting robust participation from the public and an urgent response by the police department for the apprehension of and charges against two people, accused of spraypainting vulgar and racist graffiti throughout downtown on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

About 24 hours after the pair allegedly engaged in their spraypainting escapade, police charged brothers Thomas and Jonathan Yarbrough, ages 21 and 19, respectively, both of East Falmouth, Massachusetts. They are charged with felony level criminal mischief.

While surveillance footage, some of which was shared to social media, shows a third individual in the group, Police Chief Matt Canfield said the investigation concluded the criminal activity was limited to the Yarbroughs.

“We are confident that he was not responsible for the graffiti,” Canfield said about the third person captured in the video.

Canfield said police believe the accused were visiting the area to go skiing. Once identified, the brothers were found at an Airbnb they were renting in Gilford.

“For whatever reason, they decided to go on this little spree of putting graffiti downtown,” Canfield said on Friday morning. Police suspect they are also responsible for graffiti that appeared in Gilford around the same time.

On Thursday evening, before the suspects were apprehended, Canfield said the graffiti, which included phallic images as well as racist slurs and words that referenced human anatomy, was discovered by overnight police patrols in the early morning hours of Jan. 9. Black spraypaint was left on the walls, windows and doors of businesses on Pleasant, Main and Hanover streets.

Speaking on Thursday, Canfield said the act expressed “complete and utter disrespect to our city for someone to do this kind of graffiti.” He said both his patrol division and detectives were collaborating on the case, an unusual deployment of resources for graffiti but a reaction that reflected the scope of the businesses affected — there were at least a dozen different “taggings,” Canfield said — as well as the subject matter of the graffiti and its prominent location along the city’s main arteries.

The investigation was accelerated thanks to several surveillance video recordings, captured by local businesses, which showed three male individuals, wearing hooded sweatshirts and sweatpants, spraypainting the graffiti and laughing together about their mischief.

“The graffiti itself, some of the stuff that was written was quite insulting,” Canfield said on Thursday. “We work very closely with city leadership, revitalizing the downtown area, which has really taken off. We certainly want downtown to be vibrant, as we do the rest of Laconia.”

On Thursday morning, merchants expressed exasperation with the situation. An employee at MC Cycle & Sport described trying to use a pressure washer to remove spraypaint, only to have the water freeze against bricks in temperatures around 15 degrees.

Melissa McCarthy, owner of The Studio on Main Street, said she had to start her day by standing on the street corner in the cold, using razor blades to scrape a phallic image from her store window.

Even if the culprits were caught, she said, “they won’t have to clean that. Somebody else will have to pay to have that cleaned. Their prank or caper costs people money, costs people energy, costs people embarrassment,” noting a nearby dance studio suffered an offensive phrase spraypainted on the brick facade in their entryway — past which each of the dance students, including many children, must walk on their way into and out of the business.

“I could have done better things with my morning than standing out on the street corner with a razor blade, in the cold,” McCarthy said.

Charlie St. Clair, who owns Laconia Antique Center on Main Street, saw Chris Green of New England Dustless Blasting cleaning off the side of one of the other buildings affected on Friday, and quickly contracted with him to remove the graffiti from his building as well.

St. Clair said he heard the city might clean it off, “but I didn’t want this crap on my building for another day.

"Graffiti would be one thing, but this was not graffiti, this was just garbage,” he said. He noted other business owners were similarly taking fast action to remove the offensive spraypaint.

“It’s out-of-pocket expenses for us, hopefully we’ll get restitution, but we wanted to jump on this quick. I’m just happy to get it off the side of my building.”

On Friday morning, after the two accused had already been charged and released on bail — they are scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, Feb. 27 – Canfield said the case was so quickly resolved thanks to an aggressive response by his patrol officers and detectives, as well as abundant help from the public.

“The biggest thing is a shout out to the residents and business owners, their immediate willingness to cooperate with the investigation and come forward with videos and make that readily available to us,” Canfield said.

“I am very grateful for our partnership with the downtown businesses.”