NewsWest 9
MIDLAND - Police are on the hunt for suspects after a boxing club is vandalized not once, but twice in the last three weeks. It's a black eye for the volunteer gym, but it's not the first time its happened. NewsWest 9 had a look at how the group is getting right back into the ring.
"They're good kids," Lalo Lujan, who runs the Clayton Williams Boxing Center in south Midland, said. "They can't wait for the day to that's [the boxing club is] open and come back every workout."
On Monday, it was the regular routine inside the Boxing Center. Kids of all ages train and learn self-discipline through sport. But on the outside, Lujan was trying to figure out how much it's going to cost to clean up, after vandals hit again.
"I came by and looked and they graffitied both sides of the building, the west side and the east side, and they graffitied part of the main entrance door," Lujan explained.
Lujan said the damage sets the club back about five-hundred dollars. But that's not all. He's still trying to fix the damage from three weeks ago, after vandals broke several windows on the garage.
"When I looked at it, it kind of hurt me a lot," Lujan said. "It hurt in my heart and everything, because we are here five days a week helping kids out of the street, putting them in the ring, and everything and to see something like that, you know, it really hurts."
It's not the first time building's wall has been hit by vandals. For Lujan, though, what happens on the outside won't stop what the good things that happen every day inside the walls.
"The doors are open to anybody that wanted to come in here and work out, it's open to the kids that did the graffiti, if they walk in the door and tell me hey I did it, the doors are open to them, that's why we're here, to get them out of the street," Lujan explained.
