Santa Claus is gone. So are the Grinch and a giant polar bear.
Holiday vandals have struck again, this time making off with inflatables worth more than $500 from the yard of a Gwinnett County residence.
The incident happened sometime between midnight Friday and before 7 a.m. Saturday at Mike Turner’s home on Webb Gin House Road in Lawrenceville.
Turner spends 60 hours every year setting up a spectacular display of 10 inflatables, 120,000 lights, and even animation and music. Every part of his corner lot is filled with decorations; he says his electric bill alone comes to $1,000 between the time he throws on the switch Thanksgiving Day and when he turns everything off on New Year’s Day.
“I do all the lights for the kids. There are probably 200 to 300 cars that come by my house every night. … I’d love seeing the kids’ facing, the windows are rolled down, they’re just squealing and it used to bring tears to my eyes and I just laughed to see them come by,” Turner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a phone interview.
He’s put up his big display every holiday season for the past nine years.
But this year, thieves threw a wet blanket on his holiday spirit.
Someone targeted five of his inflatables and got away with four. The fifth, they ripped open as they tried to take it out of the ground, and they left it behind. Turner has been able to repair it.
“My assumption is that they were probably going to take more but may have been interrupted,” Turner said. He discovered the crime when he came outside Saturday morning to get his newspaper. He's filed a police report on the felony theft incident.
Two of the stolen inflatables “were very old and dear and very priceless,” he said.
“One was like a chimney, and the air would go to the Grinch, and the Grinch would rise out of the chimney. He’d look at you, then a couple of seconds later the air would go out of him and he would go back into the chimney. That’s the one the kids liked – you asked which one they liked best, they always said the Grinch.”
The other inflatable was a giant white polar bear, 6 to 7 feet tall, “in a sitting position with a big smile on its face looking at you,” Turner said.
The third was a Santa Claus who waved at passersby as he sat in a chair with a puppy dog -- “that was the centerpiece of one of my light shows” – and the fourth, new this year, was a Santa in an airplane, with propellers that spun around.
The thieves damaged and left behind a Santa in his sleigh.
“Saturday was a real bad day for me. I just really felt blue the whole day,” Turner said. “For somebody who think they can just come into your yard and take things, they’re just stealing Christmas from the kids who come by to see all this stuff.”
“Now, as people come by, I question who they are. It’s made me think twice about who these people are driving by. It’s kind of soured me on the whole deal, but I hope I get over it quickly,” he said. “I’ve got to think the majority of the people of the world are good and, hopefully, this is just a one-time occurrence.”
The theft at the Turner home was the second holiday-related vandalism of the weekend.
In the Gates Mill subdivision in Milton, in north Fulton County, residents of several homes awoke Saturday morning to find a damaged Nativity scene, a baby Jesus and Mary statue tossed aside and a Santa lawn ornament hanging from a tree.
Yards were left with bent, broken and even beheaded Christmas decorations. Reindeer lights were knocked over, and an inflatable Santa was flattened. Residents believe it was the work of teenagers.
"It's not right," homeowner Mark Vantassel told Channel 2 Action News. "It's Christmas. It's for the kids, and to do this kind of stuff, it's just not right."
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