ORLANDO, Fla. – University of Central Florida police are searching for a man caught on surveillance video vandalizing a popular Koi pond on campus.
Investigators said the incident happened Sunday morning when the barefoot man walked into the Koi pond at the Burnett Honors College.
Dean Alvin Wang said the man ripped up the pump and the filter and threw them in the garbage. Wang said the man then filled up the pond with chlorinated water from a garden hose and left it running overnight.
Wang told News 6 the staff arrived Monday morning to a plaza flooded with water and fish.
He said a fish specialist triaged most of the fish, but they lost four of them. He called the incident "deliberate" and "malicious."
"That literally breaks my heart. They're so beautiful!" said Ciara Washington, a UCF student who said she enjoys studying next to the pond.
She told News 6 she has a message for the man seen in the video.
"What you did was really horrible," she said. "I'm always a forgiving person, but these Koi fish did nothing to you personally, and it's really sad that you would do something like that to them."
If you have any information on the man in the surveillance pictures, you are asked to call UCF Police at 407-823-5555.