Please Share, Tag yourself and everyone that knew about this elephant! Spread the word anyway. With all our help we WILL find this guy. As many of you know by now our Elephant and the surrounding towns mascot was torched and burned completely to the ground Friday morning. To make matters worse, I was out of state on vacation celebrating my parents 50th anniversary. I had people at the house “house-sitting”. The house was not empty!

At roughly 3:15am Friday morning video captures a single person walking down the street, entering our yard throwing an accelerant on the face of the elephant. He lights it and it goes up in a massive fireball. He runs away! All while this is caught on video & audio. The elephant was made of fiberglass and is NOT very flammable. The fire dies out very quickly as it should and very little damage is done to the elephant. Roughly 30min later he returns to the scene as most criminals do. Again, this is caught on video. This time with much more accelerant. He sprays the entire front right side of the Elephant as well as my yard with this flammable liquid. Relights it, almost lighting himself on fire. This time due to the amount he used and lighting the grass on fire the flame was able to stay lit. At it’s max height I would guess the flames were 35-40ft high and the fire came with in feet of my house, the neighbors house and our fence. It burned for an hour. Not a single person drove down the street during this time and no police or fire department was called.

Although I had people home watching the house, they were sleeping and did not see any of this happening. When the fire was almost out but still burning my neighbor across the street came out for work and watched it burn for 8min. Did NOT call the police of fire department. He is not a suspect, but it just shows the pure ignorance of some people.

Not until the morning when my other neighbor got up for work did they see this and we were notified. Between all the video cameras at my house and the rest around this entire block WE WILL FIND THIS GUY. PERIOD! NO DOUBT! I am not posting a photo of him yet until I finish with detectives. However, should anyone have ANY information leading to the arrest of this individual there is a nice fat CASH REWARD in it for you! Put together by all of us.

The elephant was created in the late 60’s and was eventually brought here in November of 1986 by my father from Hayward Wisconsin. It has been a staple of this town and surrounding area for decades. My father and I used to decorate it and go all out for Christmas. My parents retired and I eventually bought the house from them in 2007 and took over care of the elephant. My father was diagnosed with a form of cancer due to his time served fighting in the Vietnam War. Agent Orange related for those of you that follow that. A few years ago he decided to sell a lot of his belongings to help pay for the increased cost of living for them. One of these belongings was the Elephant. After the town and surrounding area found out about the sale of the Elephant the town got together and created a GoFund Me page to help save it. We had nothing to do with this. The city raised about half the money he originally was selling it for in a short time. He never imagined so many people had such love for this simple statue and decided to cancel the sale. The elephant became “Everyone’s Elephant” and it was agreed it would stay. Kristi and I had plans in the works to repair and paint it this September. Sadly, that will no longer happen.

R.I.P. Northlake Elephant 1986 – 2018

Now let’s all get together and find this guy!