An Arlington Heights couple has pleaded guilty to repeatedly vandalizing a Republican political office in the northwest suburb, admitting to defacing the building with swastikas, obscenities and mocking references to slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Brock McNerney, 72, and Moisette McNerney, 69, who live in the 1200 block of East Clarendon Avenue in Arlington Heights, pleaded guilty to criminal damage and criminal defacement, according to court records. In exchange, they received sentences of 18 months of court supervision. Judge Thomas Nowinski also ordered the couple to write an apology letter to the Republicans of Wheeling Township.
Investigators identified the McNerneys as the people responsible for vandalizing the group’s office at 909 East Rand Road late on January 25, after surveillance video showed two individuals using markers to write obscenities and draw symbols on the office windows.
Arlington Heights Police Chief Nicholas Pecora said a responding officer documented profanity written in black ink, several Nazi symbols, and what appeared to be feces and an unknown liquid on the walkway leading to the office door.
John Saletta, the deputy Republican committeeman for Wheeling Township, told CWB Chicago in January that the January incident was actually the second time the office had been targeted. He said the first occurred in December, when someone wrote messages on the building’s exterior brick mocking Kirk, who was fatally shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University in September.
Those messages included phrases such as “CHARLIE SQUIRT FRIENDLY FIRE,” “MY NECK HURTS,” and a longer statement referencing Kirk’s “passion for hate,” Saletta said.
Saletta said the organization was “low-key” about the December incident but decided to install security cameras afterward.
In a victim impact statement, the group said members have been left shaken by the vandalism.
“Regrettably but truthfully, the perpetrators of this act against [us] were largely successful in their mission to silence and intimidate our speech and beliefs,” the statement read. “Our membership is in fact intimidated by what happened. Our membership no longer feels personally safe when it holds open office hours in an office that is has occupied for over two decades. Our membership now has a heightened sense of concern at expressing our views.”
