ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — Residents in Old Town Albuquerque woke up to a sudsy display Friday morning, after someone vandalized the statue of Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdes with Dawn dish soap.
“As soon as I got out here and I saw that, ‘hey it’s snowing in July!'” said Wayne Presser, who works in Old Town.
The statue of Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdes in Old Town, on the corner of Mountain Road and Rio Grande Boulevard, became a tourist attraction Friday morning for a different, more unusual reason: “I go for my morning walk every morning and then I saw the fountain and it was like full of suds,” said Ben Michael Barreras, who lives in the area and owns a restaurant nearby, “I was like, ‘oh my Gosh, it’s a bubble bath!'”
This vandalism incident that happened here at the fountain at Old Town has people who live and work around here in disbelief.
“How many fools do we have in this world? My gosh!” Presser said, “It’s a shame that we have this as our premier stop here in Albuquerque and then you see this and its really discouraging.”
“There’s no respect for the area. Sometimes, we need to get those people that are doing that a little sense of self-respect for themselves maybe, to the behavioral health programs in the state and maybe now that we have a new legislature, maybe they can do something about this,” Barreras said.
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Solid Waste Crews with the City of Albuquerque were called out to wash up around 9:00am, working on flushing the system and making sure the pumps aren’t damaged. “Diverting resources over to this means that we can’t get out to other things. So, we’d like to get out to as many things as possible,” said Alex Bukoski, public information officer for the Solid Waste Department, “This is unexpected, but we’re hoping that the pumps are gonna be fine, we’re hoping that we’re gonna be able to turn them back on and get this fountain up and running without having to replace anything.”
They don’t know who did it, but a bottle of Dawn dish soap was found by crews on the scene. People in the area say the fountain has had its fair share of problems.
“We had an incident two or three years ago it was green,” Presser said, “They’ve had feces in there, they have special stuff put in so that they don’t bathe in it. And so, you know, it’s nasty.”
Whether it was a prank or done for some other reason, commuters had a slightly different—foamier—view of Old Town Friday morning.
The city says they will be checking surveillance to see if cameras captured who did it. News 13 reached out to the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) to see if they will get involved; we are waiting to hear back.
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