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Vandals smash wine bottles, turn off coolers, spoiling food at popular Cocoa restaurant

COCOA, Fla. — Vandals broke into a popular Cocoa restaurant and caused more than $100,000 in damage.

Workers spent Wednesday sweeping up glass from shattered wine bottles at the Black Tulip on Brevard Avenue.

Authorities said the vandals smashed the restroom sinks and toilets, along with wine racks and the cash register.

The manager told WFTV the owner, who is her father, is in Brazil.

"Bathrooms, toilets broken, sinks broken, hundreds and hundreds of bottles just broken all over the restaurant," said general manager Tanya Colzani.

Colzani said she found the mess at her family's business when she walked in to open up earlier this week.

"What am I going to tell my dad when he comes back from vacation? Thirty-two years of being here, nothing like this has ever happened in 32 years of us being here," Colzani said.

The restaurant is a popular fixture in Cocoa, and now police said they are trying to figure out who may hold a grudge against the family that could have led to the vandalism.

"Absolutely speechless, to be honest. It's devastating, absolutely devastating," said worker ACara Fjeldheim.

The vandals turned off food storage coolers and freezers so the restaurant's food spoiled.

"Probably about four inches of standing water, open freezer doors, with the freezers turned off, broken equipment, broken bottles, broken utensils, I mean, anything that you could think of that could be broken was broken," said worker Theodore Baily.

The vandals may have known their way around the restaurant, and there is even evidence they cooked themselves some food as they worked to destroy the place, officials said.

Colzani said she does not know when she can reopen the restaurant.