Waterloo Regional Police are investigating after two windows were smashed at the Ram Dham Hindu temple in Kitchener’s Bridgeport neighbourhood.
Investigators say someone heaved five stones through the two window panes at about 11:15 p.m. on Sunday night.
Mohan Kendall, vice president of Ram Dham Hindu temple, shows one of the rocks thrown through the temple’s rear door. (Gary Graves/CBC)
The temple’s spiritual leader, Swami Chaitanya Jyoti, says she was attending a vigil at Kitchener City Hall, paying tribute to the 129 people killed in the Paris attacks, when the vandals struck.
“I just went to the ceremony at city hall where they were mourning the Paris people and I came back and it had happened,” she says.
Jyoti says she has no idea who would have carried out such an act, or their motive for vandalizing the building.
Waterloo Regional Police investigators say they’re not sure what the motive was either, noting they’ve received no reports of anything stolen from the temple.
“Our information is not that they tried to gain access to the building,” Staff Srg. Michael Haffner says. “They just simply caused some rocks to be thrown through the windows and then left.”
Haffner says that while investigators aren’t calling this a hate crime, or drawing links the Paris attacks, both remain a possibility until police can identify and question a suspect.
“It’s an unfortunate circumstance if people are making a correlation between what happened in France and our area,” Haffner says. “Until we locate anyone who is responsible it would be difficult to speculate.”
CBC NEWS
