Two Bloorcourt business owners are struggling to determine who is behind a string of vandalism against their storefronts.

Tracey TieF, the owner of Annares Natural Health Apothecary says she has had four instances of vandalism against her store since Nov. 2016.

Yauca De Almeida, the owner of Yauca’s Lounge, started in September, De Almeida said, and have continued on an almost monthly basis.

The shops sit adjacent to each other, two of several that pepper Dovercourt Rd. in the city’s west-end neighbourhood.

The vandalism ranges from broken front windows, to anti-Semitic graffiti including swastikas and the phrase “I heart Nazis” appearing on Annares’ community blackboard, to what appears to be feces being spread across the front windowpanes of Yauca’s Lounge.

Toronto Police confirmed that they’re conducting a mischief investigation into the incidents.

Const. David Hopkinson said the current evidence likely isn’t enough to classify the incidents as hate crimes.

“We’re the only two on the block that have been targeted,” TieF told the Star.

TieF estimated the two shop owners have spent a minimum of $5,000 each on security cameras and clean-up of the graffiti and vandalism at their stores.

Police have offered little assistance to investigate the issue, TieF says. “Every time the police come (police say) ‘oh it’s random, it’s just some crazy person’” she said. However, the business owners say the suspect description police gave to nearby shelters of a woman they suspected to be responsible for the vandalism did not match security footage obtained at Yauca’s.

TieF said security footage shows a tall, thin man dressed all in black walking up Dovercourt Rd. from Bloor St. carrying a bag.

The man places the bag on the ground and removes two jars full of what appears to be feces, and then proceeds to throw each jar at the window of Yauca’s Lounge, TieF said.

Next, TieF said the footage shows the man removing a hammer from his bag and striking the front door’s windowpane three times.

“It was completely intentional and he was completely disguised, head to toe,” TieF says of the footage.

“People have come up with every other theory possible, that I have enemies or he has enemies, but we have no enemies in common, we barely know each other,” TieF said.

None of the three other stores on the block have been touched, she says.

“We have to believe it has some intention.”

The employees are nervous to be at work at night, she says, and the days that staff come in and find damage to the store are “very upsetting, because we know it’s not random.”

De Almeida said his restaurant has been vandalized five times in the last four months.

The restaurant owner also said that the incidents have made a negative impact on his staff and on the neighbourhood.

“Every month between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. he comes around,” De Almeida said. “I’m not sure who’s doing it, but someone is intentionally trying to intimidate us.”

“The guy could come back any time,” De Almeida said. “I don’t know if tomorrow it will happen again, and police will just come and take another report.”

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The Canadian Criminal Code Section 318 says anyone who directs hatred toward an identifiable group or advocates or promotes genocide can be convicted of a hate crime.

In the definition, an identifiable group is considered to be “any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.”

With files from Alina Bykova