The Canton Police Department is investigating extensive damage to a home in the community involving “minor numbers.”

“We are aware of and have been actively investigating a recent incident of malicious damage involving multiple juveniles since receiving the call for duty late Sunday,” Canton Police Chief Helena Rafferty said in a statement Wednesday afternoon .

The incident is under active investigation, and when pressed for additional information, Rafferty said an incident report was not yet available.

Rafferty said her department is “in constant contact with the contractor/homeowner” and “has engaged outside municipal police agencies to assist us with the extensive interview process with those involved and other aspects of the case.”

Canton as a community has been subject to turmoil on the national stage, being the site of both Boston police officer John O’Keefe and resident Sandra Birchmore died under criminally contested circumstances. The cases led to an ongoing audit of the local police department.

O’Keefe’s death was particularly in the national spotlight at the center of the Karen Read case.

The prosecutors charged Reading, Aged 44, resident of Mansfield, of murdering O’Keefe, her boyfriend of approximately two years at the time of his death on 29 January 2022. Norfolk County say the prosecutors Read ran over O’Keefe in her Lexus SUV and left him to freeze to death on the front lawn of the Canton home.

Birchmore was pregnant when she died on February 1, 2021, in what appeared to be a suicide attempt in her Canton apartment. But federal prosecutors say she was impregnated by a Stoughton police officer who groomed her since she was a baby and then killed her to cover up his crimes and staged the scene to look like a suicide.

Originally published: November 27, 2024 at 2:01 PM EST