Photo: Police at Palace of Sports by Paulius Skučas

A group of 50 masked, knife-wielding teenage boys has turned the crumbling Palace of Sports complex built on top of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius into their gang clubhouse and have threatened pedestrians in the area, including children, with their weapons, as well as attacking a lone security guard in charge of the site, according to Paulius Skučas, an LNK television reporter who posted on Instagram as well as did a Lithuanian state radio interview about the situation.

Skučas posted photos of the incident on Instagram with textual explanations:

This is how the Palace of Sports looked after the massive attack by teenagers this evening. Police and security stood guard for several hours. It seems the gang of teenagers are so uncontrollable and undetainable that all the residents of the surround neighborhoods and buildings have become hostages.

Today on Mindaugas Bridge I was threatened personally that if I helped the police I would be f*cked. OK. I understand the situation perfectly but I’m not about to be frightened by little boys and this screwed up person, so not only will I report this to the police again, I will also force their parents and guardians who are failing to raise them properly to legal accountability.

All day long a huge gang of teenagers laid siege to the building, lit powerful firecrackers and eventually tore down the fence in full view of passers-by, and in full daylight attacked a security guard with rocks and sticks. His automobile was smashed up and he was assaulted as well. Police shrug their shoulders and say openly, we can do nothing against juveniles.

So I’m waiting for comments on Monday from the commissioner general [of police], the interior minister, child protective services and the municipality.

Skučas posted several other posts regarding the ongoing incident, including this:

This is the latest update on the life of the Palace of Sports. As I was coming from Mindaugas Bridge and heard windows being smashed again at the Palace of Sports, I wasn’t able to remain passive about it. With telephone engaged in time, here you can see several interesting masked citizens fleeing. Together with police and another civic-minded person we were able to capture one of them. A teenager. Who knew his rights much better than his duties. But there is a video recording which contradicts [his] lie.

I call for the Lithuanian Police and child protection specialists not to just cover their faces but to determine what is going on here and why for an entire week this building in the city center has been smashed and destroyed with such intensity.

According to a report dated September 25 on the television channel TV3’s webpage:

A gang of teenage vandals has appeared in Vilnius. On Saturday police received calls about prowlers on top of the roof of the Palace of Sports building in Vilnius, but that wasn’t the full extent of the teenagers running amok. Again the property belonging to the state has been damaged with the building’s windows broken. Vilnius police report that at 2:53 P.M. on Saturday two young people were observed on the roof of the complex. It was believed they might have been lighting off firecrackers there. When police arrived the young men hid inside the building. Police attempted to determine how many there were of them and called out to them to exit the building. Things didn’t calm down after Saturday’s incident. Journalist Paulius Skučas heard the windows being smashed at the Palace of Sports and was able to photograph fleeing youths in masks.

TV3 report in Lithuanian here.