Fort vandals sentenced – fined for graffiti

U.S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announced to Historic City News today, that U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel B. Toomey sentenced 22 year-old Scott Anthony Hill and 20 year-old Fang Chin Tsai, both of Jacksonville, to serve 24 months’ probation, including one month of home detention, for malicious damage to United States property.

As a condition of probation, Judge Toomey ordered both to perform community service at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. The court also ordered each to pay a fine of $1000 and restitution to the National Park Service for the costs of repairing the damage caused to the Castillo.

Both pled guilty on June 3, 2011.

According to court documents, on January 20, 2011, St. Augustine Police Department officers saw Tsai and Hill walking down Charlotte Street, in St. Augustine, at 1:30 A.M.

Officers approached both and questioned them about graffiti in St. Augustine, Florida. At the time, Hill had in his possession a blue can of spray paint.

Both Tsai and Hill confessed to spray painting a single fish on the Castillo. A number of graffiti tags that had not existed before were found on the walls of the Castillo by National Park Service rangers the next morning.

All the tags were in blue spray paint, consistent with the color of the spray paint possessed by Hill, and contained fish or fish like symbols in their design.

Construction of the Castillo began in 1672 by the Kingdom of Spain and is the oldest masonry and the only extant Seventeenth Century fort in North America. One of the tags was in a portion of the fort’s wall containing the original plaster used by the Spanish.

The Castillo is a national monument that sits on approximately 20.5 acres of land owned and managed by the United States Department of Interior, National Park Service that lies in the heart of St. Augustine, St. Johns County, Florida.

After discovering the spray paint on the walls of the Castillo, National Park Service employees began cleaning and attempting to remove the spray paint from the walls. To date, the National Park Service has incurred $667.25 in costs removing the spray paint from the walls.