Two women have been charged after allegedly vandalising a veterans’ organisation in Melbourne.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police allegedly caught the women defacing the Heidelberg RSL at 1.45am on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the alleged offenders, aged 22 and 20, spotted police, they ran on foot in opposite directions, police have said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officers split up and pursued the pair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a short foot chase, both women were arrested.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They have been charged with criminal damage, marking graffiti on property without consent, and possessing graffiti implement to mark graffiti.<\/p>\n
The pair are scheduled to appear before the Heidelberg Magistrates\u2019 Court on May 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A statement from the Reservoir RSL said the “hateful” graffiti – including “anti-veteran, anti-Australian Defence Force and deeply offensive slurs” – was an act “to deliberately target a veterans\u2019 organisation on ANZAC Day”.<\/p>\n
“It’s disgraceful,” the statement read.<\/p>\n
“It was clearly intended to cause hurt, division and distress to veterans, serving members, their families, and the broader community who gather each year to honour sacrifice and service.”<\/p>\n
Two other vandalism incidents occurred overnight, which police believe may be linked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A passerby reported additional vandalism to the walls of the venue on the corner of Spring and Cleveland streets just after midnight.<\/p>\n
The third graffiti incident was discovered at the RSL in Fawkner in Lorne Street at 5am on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Police believe the graffiti at that location was sprayed sometime between April 24 and 25.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0An investigation is ongoing to determine whether the Fawkner incident is linked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two women have been charged after allegedly vandalising a veterans’ organisation in Melbourne.\u00a0 Police allegedly caught the women…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[305120,64,63,48,305121,44],"class_list":["post-629807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-anzac-day-crime","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-crime","tag-heidelberg-rsl","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}