Christmas decorations were vandalized on Dec. 6 in the city of St. James near the railroad tracks located around West Springfield Street and North Jefferson Street.

Matt Fox, owner of Fox Security Services, was contacted about the incident.

“Me and my wife got up, and we wanted to check the inflatables cause we knew we had a lot of wind that night. So because of that, we decided to drive up town, and when we got up town, we realized that there were no inflatables,” said Fox. “It wasn’t just ours that was gone. Dr Tim's (inflatables), one of the other businesses, also was not there.”

According to the Dec. 7 police report by St. James Police Department Patrol Officer Elijah Shoaf, Fox’s wife, Amanda Fox, reported that the two inflatables, which consisted of seven to eight-foot-tall dinosaurs, a tree and a snowman, were destroyed.

Dr. Tim’s Pharmacy had a small bus with a squirrel that would pop up and down.

“We got out of the truck and realized that somebody had actually cut the strings that were on the inflatables,” said Fox. “It was kind of devastating, because we knew at that point that it wasn’t wind that had blown these away.”

His wife called law enforcement and made the report, and they decided to try and find where the inflatables were. They checked the nearby dumpsters and found the damaged inflatable decorations.

“I walked over, checked the dumpster and all of our inflatables and drop cords, and everything were in that dumpster,” said Fox.

He pulled his truck up beside the dumpster and went to retrieve the inflatables to check them. 

“When we checked them, they were just sliced like someone had knife practiced on them,” said Fox.

Each inflatable was sliced multiple times.

“It was kind of a malice attack on Christmas, I guess you could say, on the community,” said Fox.

When speaking about his inflatables, Fox mentioned that all his decorations were taped to all the cords, and someone had completely ripped off the tape.

“It’s upsetting, not because we spent the money on these, but because businesses are trying to do something nice for the community, for the kids,” said Fox. 

The couple was inspired to do a dinosaur theme for their decorations because their ten-year-old son loves them and thought that other kids would enjoy something similar.

“It just becomes heartbreaking at that point because now the kids can’t enjoy stuff like that because someone decided to vandalize stuff like that,” said Fox.

The couple recorded their search for the missing decor with a body camera.

Tim Wilson, owner of Dr. Tim’s Pharmacy, told the Saint James Press about the incident from his perspective. 

“I drove up to the cemetery after church and then drove up to where the incident happened,” said Wilson.

Wilson learned about the incident through the Foxes’ investigation.

“I hope they can catch whoever did this,” said Wilson when asked about the situation.

The St. James Police Department and Fox Security Services are investigating the incident.

There has been no camera footage recorded of how the vandalism took place.