Teens charged with causing $100,000 damage to Canton church

Six teenagers were arrested Thursday in connection with recent vandalism that caused an estimated $100,000 damage to a Cherokee County church that has been the target of teen vandals in the past, authorities said.

New Hightower Baptist Church on Shoal Creek Road in Canton, which is reputed by some to be a “haunted church,” was vandalized on March 27 and again on April 3, Cherokee sheriff’s Major Ron Hunton said Friday.

JOHNNY CRAWFORD / Jcrawford@ajc.com

Broken pots litter the grounds of the Shoal Creek Road church.

• Photos: Damage at New Hightower Baptist

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“The offenders damaged some 40 tombstones and burglarized the church,” Hunton said.

He said the suspects burned church hymnals inside the building and damaged the air duct system of the church.

On Thursday, six juveniles ranging in age from 14 to 16 turned themselves in and were charged with burglary, vandalism of a place of worship, arson and criminal damage to property, Hunton said.

The teens are being held at the Youth Detention Center in Paulding County.

The 122-year-old church, which is known in some circles as “Hell’s Church” for allegedly being haunted and is loosely linked to one of Georgia’s most infamous murders, was burned down in 1990 after being firebombed by teenagers.

Michael Douglas Priest Jr., 18, claimed he was trying to avenge his father’s murder by burning down the church, and was later sentenced to 90 days in a boot-camp-style prison and 10 years’ probation.

According to an Atlantla Journal-Constitution account of Priest’s 1991 sentencing, the teen contended that he and two juvenile accomplices believed they were striking at a reputed site of Satan worship, and believed that he was punishing Jack Howard Potts, who had kidnapped and killed Michael Douglas Priest Sr. 16 years earlier.

Potts kidnapped the teen’s father and killed him in a remote Forsyth County field as he begged for mercy. Potts died of liver cancer at the Augusta State Medical Prison in 2005.

The church was rebuilt after the 1990 arson, and and a monument outside the front door reads, “A remnant from New Hightower Baptist Church burned by vandals 1990.”

Hunton, the spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said Friday that the teens arrested for the recent vandalism had not given detectives a motive for their actions.