Vandals damage mayor's home and other parts of Olympia following protest

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Olympia businesses and residents were left cleaning up a lot of vandalism following a protest on Friday that even caused damage to the mayor's home.

On Saturday, members of the Olympia community were seen scrubbing the spray paint off parts of their city.

“Here’s a sign inviting people in and instead it said something you don’t want to repeat to your kids,” said Neil Shaw.

Shaw lives in the South Capitol Neighborhood and helped over the weekend scrub several graffiti tags off of the neighborhood’s welcome sign.

“Well, the Black Lives Matter message, that’s a good message, but when the citizens end up having to clean up graffiti when they come through, that’s kind of defeating the purpose,” he said.

The damage stretched not just through businesses downtown, but along residential streets and homes in the city.

“I don’t have a problem if they want to protest in the street and get across a point. But when they start doing damage to our home and threatening our livelihood and our neighbors, then they’ve gone too far,” said Jeff Engle.

Engle didn't see any damage happen to his home in-person, but said his surveillance camera captured an incident. In the video, a person is seen spraying “B-L-M” on the side of his home, feet away from a BLM sign already placed in the window.

“This is not the first event we’ve had at our house,” he said.

Engle said his home was targeted because his wife, Cheryl Selby, is the mayor of Olympia.

“I’m concerned for my wife’s safety. Our girls are visiting. I’m concerned for their safety, and I’m really concerned for the neighborhood,” he said.

Witnesses said it appeared a small group of people were the ones responsible for the damage.

“There were several people in the crowd telling them {the vandals} to get off the property, that they weren’t part of the protest, that they weren’t here for that, and that they were not representing BLM,” said Amal Joury, who saw people damaging property.

Q13 reached out to Olympia police for a statement, but have not heard back yet.