Police searching for vandals who broke into Visalia museum

VISALIA, Calif. (KFSN) -- Visalia patrol officers are searching for the suspects responsible for breaking into and vandalizing the Tulare County Museum in Visalia Friday night.

The museum curator says surprisingly nothing was stolen, and whoever committed this crime simply did so just for the sake of destroying the property.

"I got the notifications that the alarms were going off, so I came over to the museum and the police were already here," curator Amy King said.

It's an important piece of history in Visalia that was damaged by vandals. The Tulare County Museum at the Mooney Grove Park was broken into at about 8:45 p.m.

King says when she and patrol officers showed up to the property, they found smashed windows, doors and display cases to four different structures - including an old school house and a farm house dating back to the 1800s.

"It's going to take weeks, maybe months to get all of that taken care of," King said.

She says no items there are of high value, but a lot of them are irreplaceable pieces of history to Tulare County. She says the suspects did break some of their cameras, but they still got some surveillance video and hope police will be able to identify them.

Although she says it will be a while until they can get everything fixed, they're expected to open back up to the community by Thursday which will give them just enough time to clean up the mess and make it safe for people to visit.

*"Our mission is to preserve history and save that for our future," King said.

The damage is estimated at about $5,000. A fundraiser was set by the museum, for ticket information, click here.