{"id":303812,"date":"2026-05-07T05:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/303812\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T05:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:16:07","slug":"oakland-church-memorial-honoring-homicide-victims-vandalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/303812\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland church memorial honoring homicide victims vandalized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A North Oakland Catholic church\u2019s anti-violence memorial was reportedly targeted this week by vandals who destroyed crosses honoring homicide victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>St. Columba Catholic Church, located at 64th Street and San Pablo Avenue, has long maintained a lawn display of wooden crosses honoring Oakland homicide victims from the current year.<\/p>\n<p>Father\u00a0Aidan McAleenan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktvu.com\/news\/columba-church-oakland-vandalized\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told KTVU<\/a> that vandals ripped out 11 of the 16 crosses currently on display and scattered the pieces into the street and median. Each cross bears the name and death date of a homicide victim, and the church traditionally blesses and returns them to families on New Year\u2019s Eve.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other damage was done to a Virgin Mary statue, which was toppled over, flower pots that were smashed and vandalism to a memorial fountain dedicated to the six people who died in the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>St. Columba is known locally for progressive activism, including support for Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ causes. While no motive has been identified, Oakland police are investigating and asking the public for information.<\/p>\n<p>McAleenan told KTVU the church intends to rebuild and move forward, calling the destruction \u201ca temporary, emotional moment\u201d that the congregation will heal from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A North Oakland Catholic church\u2019s anti-violence memorial was reportedly targeted this week by vandals who destroyed crosses honoring&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,723,332,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-303812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-crime","tag-east-bay","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303812","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=303812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}