{"id":162518,"date":"2026-02-03T21:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162518\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:44:08","slug":"long-beach-vandals-decapitate-blessed-mother-statue-in-attack-on-catholic-school-cops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162518\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach vandals decapitate Blessed Mother statue in attack on Catholic school: cops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some crooks may soon have hell to pay.<\/p>\n<p>Unholy vandals tore apart a Long Beach Catholic school \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/03\/17\/us-news\/catholic-church-named-after-st-patrick-vandalized-with-satanic-message\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">decapitating a statue of Mary<\/a>, the mother of Jesus, tearing up classrooms and stealing audio-visual equipment, cops said.<\/p>\n<p>The vandals left at least $30,000 worth of damage at Holy Innocents School on Monday, knocking off and partially shattering the head of the Mary statue that had been in the school since it was founded in 1958, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/local\/thieves-ransack-long-beach-catholic-school\/3840263\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">according to NBC Los Angeles.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other statues were also damaged in an attack on the school that officials are taking personally, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>The Catholic school was trashed by the unidentified vandals. Fox<\/p>\n<p>The holy statue was smashed and beheaded by mystery vandals. gofundme<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know if there is some healing that needs to be done or if there\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/09\/01\/us-news\/attacks-on-us-churches-have-risen-significantly-since-2021-report-finds\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">some hatred towards like, the religious objects<\/a> or towards a Catholic church or something like that,\u201d principal Cyril Cruz told NBC. \u201cWe don\u2019t know, but our students are just continuing to pray for them so I think that\u2019s so beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No arrests have been made and it\u2019s unclear how many vandals took part in the anti-Catholic destruction.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz suggested that he didn\u2019t understand why the thieves would target them, because they are located in a \u201cnot so very good neighborhood\u201d and the school receives Title I funding allocated to schools with high percentages of low-income families.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes when people talk about private schools, they equate that with money. And ultimately, the majority of our students are on tuition assistance,\u201d Cruz said.<\/p>\n<p>School principal Cyril Cruz said students are praying for the vandals.  gofundme<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gofundme.com\/f\/restoring-holy-innocents-after-vandalism?attribution_id=sl:b6bd813b-772d-44a8-bdde-85783f6571ae&amp;lang=en_US&amp;ts=1770085150&amp;utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&amp;utm_content=amp17_tb&amp;utm_medium=customer&amp;utm_source=copy_link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">A GoFundMe has been started for the school<\/a> and its raised nearly $90,000 of its $100,000 goal with more than 750 donations. The funds appear to be going towards restoring the school.<\/p>\n<p>Holy Innocents, located in northern Long Beach near the South Wrigley neighborhood, says on its website that its committed \u201cto forming young minds and hearts through a rich Classical Liberal Arts curriculum grounded in the teachings of the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some crooks may soon have hell to pay. Unholy vandals tore apart a Long Beach Catholic school \u2014&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[78803,723,131,133,132,6163,3586],"class_list":["post-162518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-catholic-schools","tag-crime","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-religion","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}