Vandals destroy young boy’s Christmas decorations

Heartless vandals have ruined Christmas for a young boy who had his Christmas lights display callously destroyed this week.

HEARTLESS vandals have ruined Christmas for a young Pottsville boy who had his Christmas lights display callously destroyed this week.

Jack Bradley, 9, had collected bottles and cans for several months to pay for his own lights, only to have them damaged in the middle of the night just a week before Christmas.

Jack is “obsessed” with Christmas lights and single-handedly set up his family’s display, rushing out to switch them on each evening.

Jack Bradley, 9, from Pottsville setting up Christmas lights before they were destroyed by vandals. Photo: Bec Hanzic

Jack spent hours setting up and changing his Christmas lights display to make sure it was absolutely perfect. Photo: Bec Hanzic

“That’s the one thing he wants to do all year is set up his house to look beautiful at Christmas,” his mum Bec Hanzic told The Gold Coast Bulletin.

Ms Hanzic said the entire front of the house had been decorated, including the garage, garden and fence.

“He kept accumulating more every time he’d earn a bit more money and he was just continually moving them around and changing the display to get it perfect,” she said.

Some of the Christmas lights display nine-year-old Jack set up all by himself. Photo: Bec Hanzic

Jack spent months collecting cans and bottles to save up for his Christmas lights. Photo: Bec Hanzic

The lights were finally in the right spot when vandals embarked on a Christmas lights spree in Pottsville, pulling out garden lights, tying knots in inflatable Santas along the street as well as destroying around $200 of Jack’s lights by cutting them in several places.

Ms Hanzic said her son struggled to understand why someone would be so cruel.

“The thing that got me was that a nine-year-old kid did this on his own, he worked to get the money, no-one coached him through it, he got up on the ladder and figured out how to put them up, then somebody so miserable in themselves has gone and done this to make them feel good,” she said.

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Jack has just one set of lights left and while he was hoping to fix his display in time for Christmas Ms Hanzic said it is too late for this year.

“It will have to be next year now,” she said.

It is the second year in a row Jack’s love for Christmas lights has been thwarted, she said.

“To make things worse last year he went online and bought lights online with my card and I wasnt’t aware, so as a punishment we threw in the bin and said he would miss it that year and this year we would do something!”