CALGROVE GATE WRECKED AGAIN.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

NEWHALL - For the second time in as many weeks, vandals ripped down the wrought-iron gate on Calgrove Boulevard at Valley Street, officials said.

Earlier this week, neighbors reported seeing a black pickup truck smash into the gate hard enough to knock it down and then speed off, city officials said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is investigating both instances of vandalism.

The first occurred April 22, in which it appeared that vandals attached cables to the iron fence and pulled it down using a pickup truck and then backed over the fence repeatedly, scraping the black paint and bending it.

The vandalism comes after the City Council voted 3-2 last year to permanently barricade Valley at Calgrove to all traffic to end a vitriolic 16-year dispute that divided the Newhall neighborhood.

The council's decision pleased neither side of the split neighborhood, and residents said people are still angry.

While some want the narrow, two-lane road, which links the Golden State Freeway to Lyons Avenue in downtown Newhall, opened to all traffic, others want the road closed - except to members of two homeowners associations.

Some residents of the Hidden Valley and Alamos Lane homeowners associations have said they are upset that they can no longer use a private gate, which allowed them to skirt the barricade. That gate, and the area surrounding it, was often vandalized.