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Seniors’ mailboxes destroyed by vandals in Suffolk neighborhood

Posted at 8:42 PM, Jun 30, 2014
and last updated 2014-06-30 20:42:33-04

Eighty-year-old Joseph Goode sits in a rocking char, two days after getting his hip replaced.

Typically in the afternoon, he's driving eight miles to Franklin each day to pick up his mail. But today, his wife does the chore instead.

"Every day. Every day I go to the post office. I`d rather be driving to the fishing pond to fish than to be going out to the mailbox," Joseph tells NewsChannel 3.

It's a trip they've taken for years after someone destroyed their own mailbox that stood in the front of their house.

And now, someone's at it again. Their latest targets are a 102-year-old man and a 93-year-old woman who live nearby.

"She`s elderly and now has to get somebody to fix her mailbox so that`s a price on her. They`re attacking mailboxes and mailboxes can`t fight back! The elders can`t fight back," the Goodes told NewsChannel 3.

The couple said the night one of the mailboxes was smashed, they heard a loud scream.

"I heard this rebel yell. Like they had accomplished something. Like 'yeah' and they drove off," they added.

And it's a close-knit neighborhood, according to the Goodes, filled with elderly people.,

"It`s very quiet. Everybody knows everybody we help each other it`s just you don`t expect this.  I feel that it`s not anyone our age would do that it has to be someone younger," they couple said.

Detectives tell NewsChannel 3 they don't have any suspects, but the Goodes say they don't blame whoever is vandalizing the mailboxes, they blame their upbringing.

"It`s the way the child is raised and the way he acts. I`ve always heard my daddy say don`t spare the rod and I feel that the rod has been spared a lot. "