Brick thrown at Goshen Businesses window next to BLM sign

GOSHEN, Ind. - A Goshen store suffered damage after a brick was thrown through the window last night. Also on the window, a sign in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Now, the brick was thrown so hard it hit the other side of the building. The owner said she somewhat expected it after putting up a Black Lives Matter sign. But what wasn’t expected is that she is the second person this week to be targeted.

“I got the call last night around 10:30,” Jenny Frech, is the owner of Soapy Gnome in Goshen.

She’s owned Soapy Gnome for 7 years, but even she was surprised to get a late-night phone call from the neighbors that a brick was thrown through her window.

“They heard the crash. There were two crashes, I guess, and they came out right away,” Frech said.

The neighbors boarded it up within minutes.

What wasn’t surprising to the owner was why this happened since Frech is one of few businesses sporting this sign on the window.

“I kind of thought maybe something might happen. I’m not flabbergasted that it happened. I’m disappointed,” she said.  “In the climate that we’re in today, I’m not really surprised that there are people out there trying to take advantage of a situation of people standing up for what’s right and using that as a time to cause some chaos.”

But Frech isn’t the only one with a broken window. Anne Thiel lives a block away and last Sunday night it was a similar scene at her home.

“It was I think around midnight, quarter after, and I was woken up by the sound of breaking glass so of course, I jumped out of bed,” Anne Thiel, a Goshen resident said.

After calling 911, she realized what had happened.

“Somebody had thrown a large piece of metal, iron some curved decorative piece through our window,” she said.

Like Frech, she also has a Black Lives Matter sign hanging on the outside of her home.

“On our balcony, we’ve had a BLM sign for years,” she said.

Although, it’s unclear if someone was trying to break in or if it was in fact targeted because of the sign.

“For me, it’s just a brick through my window and I wasn’t here but our black brothers and sisters have had to worry about bricks coming through their windows while they’re sitting and watching tv or bullets coming through their windows are into their apartments while they’re sleeping. That’s not okay,” Frech said.

She said that especially during this time, it’s important to do everything she can to support the movement.

“It’s the very bare minimum that we can do. We’re choosing to use our platform to point out some of the injustices that our brothers and sisters are facing,” she said.

So the decision to put the black lives matter sign back up right away was an easy one.

“I’m not going to let hate stop me from love,” she said.

Witnesses on the scene identified the young male and police arrested 20-year-old Collin Putz of Goshen for resisting law enforcement causing injury and criminal mischief. Putz is set to be in court next week.