T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Completion of the future Trinity Health System hospital in St. Clairsville will be pushed back due to vandalism.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County residents will have to wait longer than anticipated for the opening of the new Trinity Health System hospital in St. Clairsville.

This past weekend, police said, vandals broke into the construction site and caused a substantial amount of damage to the building.

“This is going to cause them some delays. There’s going to have to be a lot of drywall replaced, a lot of tile replaced, copper plumbing that was already pressurized and whole sections will have to be replaced,” St. Clairsville Police Chief Matt Arbenz said. “They picked up a sledge hammer and knocked holes in drywall, broke tiles, beat on copper pipes and just did a lot of damage.”

Although time and money will be lost due to having to repair damages, Arbenz said nothing was stolen.

“There’s a lot of items in there that thieves would be interested in, I suppose, but nothing was stolen. Stuff was just damaged. It was straight vandalism,” Arbenz said.

He added that since nothing was stolen, the general theory about the crime is that the vandals are juveniles.

He believes the vandals entered on foot from the wooded area behind the building due to the lack of tire tracks.

According to the St. Clairsville Police Department, no suspect or exact time of when the incident occurred has been established. However, the department is communicating with businesses in the vicinity, seeking to comb through their surveillance camera footage to see if any suspicious activities can be detected.

“I talked to the managers on the job site, and there’s no suspicion of disgruntled employees> Everybody that started the work there still works there and is happy,” Arbenz said. “Nobody’s been fired or shorted of pay.”

He added that McCarthy Building Co., which is in charge of constructing the hospital, first became aware of the vandalism when crews arrived at work on Monday.

Arbenz said if anyone in the area witnessed any type of suspicious activity in the vicinity of the St. Clairsville Post Office to Reisbeck’s Food Mart this past weekend, they should report it to police at 740-695-0123.

“Anyone who’s found responsible is going to be facing some trouble,” he said. “I mean, they did a lot of damage.”