No heat for church, food kitchen in Newark after vandals

NEWARK (WABC) -- This is a tough holiday season for parishioners at a church in Newark.

Thieves looking for cooper heavily damaged the church and now there's no heat and no food at the soup kitchen that served meals to the needy.

"To talk about it, to say someone destroyed your church it's just words, to see it, no words can describe how you feel," said Loretta Hazelwood.

Twice in less than a month, Clinton Avenue Presbyterian church was broken into.

They came prepared to rip out as much copper pipe, as they could find, and they maliciously searched for metal that's going for $4 a pound at scrap yards.

All the copper gone in the kitchen and the boiler room.

You see just hints that pipes were ever there.

This was heartless, and it looks destructive, and what we're doing is creating, building. This was to tear down," said Pastor Deb Oosterbaan.

So the soup kitchen that served hot meals 4-days a week, is on hold. What's not on hold..is the faith there. Service is held in a space in the hall small enough to heat. They'll make bagged lunches to feed the hungry.

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