Man charged with vandalizing, masturbating in front of Sioux Falls library

A Sioux Falls man was arrested after police say he broke two lights and masturbated in front of the Downtown Library early Friday morning.

Wade Earl Venosdel, 61, was charged with public indecency and intentional damage to property, police spokesman Sam Clemens said.

On Friday afternoon, a security officer at the Downtown Library noticed that two of the library's spotlights had been broken. Employees went through footage from surveillance cameras and spotted a man breaking the lights with a rock at about 2 a.m.

The man, who police identified as Venosdel, then allegedly began masturbating in front of a statue of a little girl that stands in the southwest corner of the library parking lot.

A passing police cruiser picked up a clear image of Venosdel, which investigators were able to match to the surveillance footage, Clemens said. Venosdel was later found and arrested.

A 2017 arrest record published in the Yankton Press and Dakotan shows that Venosdel was arrested for indecent exposure involving a child.

The next day, police took a report of an unknown man who masturbated in front of a 72-year-old woman reading in her car at Falls Park. That man is still at large. He is described as a stocky black man in his 20s who was wearing a red, blue and brown jacket.

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