Police on Oct. 11 arrested a former town employee and charged him with third-degree criminal mischief in connection with the vandalism of an Irwin Park porta potty last summer.
The arrested man, a 54-year-old Rowayton resident, had resigned in March 2023, though his manager was planning to terminate him at the time, according to a police arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com.
Police learned of the vandalism in September 2023, when a town worker reported the vandalism to authorities, telling officers “there was writing on the porta potty containing expletive and phallic imagery,” the arrest warrant application said.
Photos of the vandalism shown to police included disparaging language “and a drawing of a penis and testicles,” the application said.
The municipal worker told police that others had identified the suspect as a former town employee.
Two days later, police learned of text messages that the former worker had sent to another employee on the day that the vandalism appeared, July 13, 2023 (a Thursday). On that day, the former worker could be seen driving into Irwin Park and pulling up next to a porta potty, “the only porta potty in the area and one that is regularly used by the staff,” the arrest warrant application said.
The former municipal worker then texted the employee saying “to go into the porta potty and look at what he had written inside the porta potty,” the application said.
The employee did.
When police phoned the former town worker to confront him, the man told officers that “he had not been in Irwin Park since May 2023 and had not gone all summer.” The man also stated “he had not used the porta potty the last time he was at Irwin Park” and that “he went and spokek to a couple of guys he used to work with at the park and was there for approximately 5 minutes.”
The former worker additionally told police that “he was 1000% sure he did not go into a porta potty and did not vandalize a porta potty” and “had not texted anyone from his previous job in New Canaan in a long time.” Asked specifically about the text messages, the man “said he did not tell anyone to go look into a porta potty to see what he had written,” the police affidavit said.
Police then obtained a screenshot of the text message in question, which said “go look into the porto john on top of the toilet paper dispenser.”
State Superior Court Judge Bruce Hudock signed the New Canaan Police arrest warrant application. The man was taken into custody at police headquarters on the active warrant at about 5:54 p.m. on Oct. 11. He was released on $5,000 bond and scheduled to appear Oct. 24 in state Superior Court.