Halloween stands less than three weeks away, and kids are getting excited for candy and fun. However, with the recent trend of paintball vandalism, activists and Suffolk police have issued a frightening warning to troublemakers.

Community activist Karina Singh says paintballs, paint-filled exploding bullets shot from pressurized guns, were used to shoot up dozens of homes last Halloween. Now, she says kids are freezing the paintballs so they pack more of a punch.

"They do use frozen paintballs because they hurt more, they can damage more," Singh says.

Goldie Avritte says her Amityville home was hit three times with paintballs, leaving several holes in her vinyl siding.

"My grandson is a little boy, so what if he got hit? What if you got hit in the face?" Avritte says.

Besides causing injuries, Suffolk Police Lt. Michael Murphy says anyone caught vandalizing property with paintball guns could face felony charges.

"Your child will end up handcuffed to my desk in my office and very possibly will spend the night with us and be seeing a judge in the morning," Murphy says. "It's not a game."

The legal age to purchase a paintball gun is 16. However, Dean Del Prete of Cousins' Paintball says he won't sell the merchandise to anyone under 18.

"Our internal policy is 18 years old. It's just an internal policy," he says.