Kingman police arrest man accused of vandalizing nearly 20 businesses
When you drive down Main Street in Kingman, typically the first thing you notice is the red brick-lined road. However, Monday, what stuck out was not the road but several buildings with patched-up windows, including Dixon's Hardware.
Owner Lance Dixon says he "got a phone call at 3:45 a.m. on Saturday morning and you never liked those phone calls."
Dixon's was one of several businesses hit by vandalism over the weekend. In total 19 businesses were hit, mostly along Main Street here in Kingman. Police say they got their first call about all the damage around three Saturday morning.
Police Chief David Lux tells KAKE "We're still communicating with businesses to try and get damage estimates, but it's going to be in the 10s of 1000s of dollars."
Lux says the department arrested a 37-year-old suspect just a few hours after the initial call. He says surveillance video showed the suspect throwing rocks or other objects into several windows and doors. Lux says they don't know why he was doing this.
"It's always unfortunate when somebody undoes all the hard work of our local business people, there was a church that was damaged as well."
Dixon says he's been speaking with the other places hit and all of them say this is very out of the ordinary for the town. However, he's grateful it's only some damage to his window and not something more.
"You prefer random and not targeted? You worry am I being targeted? Did they target certain businesses? Because of something we did or something like that?"