Hundreds of paintball marks have shut down a Charleswood skateboard park, and has also left a personal mark on Jim Komenda, who built the park to honour his dead son.

Sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning someone peppered the Michael Komenda Memorial Skate Park with paintball bullets leaving an oily mess, and un-skatable.

The $700,000 park is a memorial to yon Michael Komenda, the teen who died when he fell from the upper deck of Winnipeg Stadium six years ago.

"I don't know who would do this," said Michael's father Jim, who wanted to honour his son's memory by giving youngsters a safe place to hang out. "Who would do something this brainless?"

Park safe place for kids

The park opened last July, and has attracted kids from all over the city by giving them a place to hang out and have fun.

For Jim Komenda, this is personal. "This park was built in Mike's memory. So when you do something against the park I think you're doing something against Michael as well," he said.

Komenda says graffiti in the park is usually covered within 12 hours. There have been problems in the past, but not to this extreme. 

Winnipeg police say cases like this can be hard to investigate.

"At certain points during the evening and night there's no ownership," said Const. Gerard Allard. "There's no positive usage that's being done there."

And that's when vandalism happens and the result is inconvenience for, and anger from those who look forward to using the park, like Jon Kolochuk.

"It's stupid and disrespectful," he said. "It's shut down now. No one has a place to skateboard. It ruins it for everybody."

It'll probably take a day or more to wash all the paint away, but even then stains will remain.

Operators of the park say they realize there's a lot of time when the park isn't being used, so to try and make sure this doesn't happen again, they say they're in the process of ordering security cameras to keep watch.

Reward offered

The Michael Komenda Memorial Youth Club is offering a $1,000 reward for anyone who provides information that will lead to an arrest and conviction in this case.

If you have information you're asked to call 888-4839 or Crime Stoppers, 786-8477(TIPS).

With a report from CTV's Kelly Dehn.