A woman suspected of using a broken decorative planter to break three large store windows of a downtown Sebastopol ice cream shop remained in custody Tuesday in the Sonoma County Jail.
Leslie Renee Nielsen, 45, was arrested Monday after witnesses alerted Sebastopol police to the vandalism, said Sebastopol police Sgt. Greg DeVore.
DeVore was just starting his shift Monday at 6:30 a.m. and was leaving the downtown police station when a downtown worker he knows stopped him to report a woman had broken a storefront window at Screamin’ Mimi’s.
At the ice cream shop the sergeant found planters and pots knocked over as well as the broken windows. Another witness pointed DeVore toward the nearby plaza where the woman had gone, apparently tipping over a planter and knocking over a garbage can on the way.
“Then I hear screaming, a female voice screaming at the top of her lungs,” the sergeant said.
The screaming woman was sitting on a park bench. She was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism and taken to jail. Nielsen carried no identification and her town of residence wasn’t known, DeVore said. Her bail was set at $5,000.
It appeared a piece of a broken pot had been used to break the windows. The damage was estimated at more than $3,000, he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@rossmannreport.
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