CLOVERDALE — Doris Hill and her husband, Randy, looked at the destruction throughout their home Tuesday morning and asked, “Why?”

“We don’t have an answer, and honestly, we’re scared to go to sleep at night because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Doris Hill said as she waited for an insurance adjuster to come to the house Tuesday afternoon.

About 8 a.m. Tuesday, someone broke into the Hills’ residence at 16326 Lauderdale 8 and destroyed much of it contents.

“Things were broken all over the house,” Lauderdale County sheriff’s investigator Brad Potts said. “It looked like someone took a golf club and just started beating on things.”

The vandals did hundreds of dollars worth of damage.

“They broke lights, the television, jars filled with change, counter tops, even the commode,” Hill said.

Things were pulled out of cabinets, and the vandals even used syrup and ketchup to write “Go to Hell” on the carpet.

“This has been going on since Labor Day, and we’re tired of it,” Hill said.

Potts said the only thing discovered stolen was prescription pain medication.

Hill said whoever is responsible had to be watching their house and knew when her son left.

“He didn’t go to school; he had a doctor’s appointment and he left about 10 minutes before 8,” Hill said. “At 8:08 a.m. I got a call about the alarm going on and someone had broken in.

“I think whoever did this was sitting somewhere close by watching, and when my son left, he came, broke in and started tearing stuff up,” Hill said.

She said her family has lived at the residence for about a year.

She said the first time someone broke into the house was Oct. 26. Before that, fishing equipment was taken from a boat, and someone broke windows in the car and the house.

Potts said the Sheriff’s Department has received five reports from the Hills about incidents at their residence.

“We’ve seen someone running away after some of the things were done, but they have never been close enough to get a good look at them,” Hill said. “We just want it to stop and to know why it is being done.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office at 256-760-5757 or Crime Stoppers at 256-386-8685.

Tom Smith can be reached at 256-740-5757 or tom.smith@TimesDaily.com.