- November 18, 2024
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July 1
Car carnage
7:10 a.m. to 11:23 a.m. P-section. Theft, criminal mischief.
The first call from an upset P-section resident came in to the Sheriff’s Office at 7:10 a.m. By noon, there were five more, all from residents who’d woken up in the morning and found their cars defaced with spray paint or missing their tags.
The first call came from a Providence Lane resident. Her teenage son had parked her Hyundai Tucson SUV in the driveway overnight and used it to drive to work that morning. It wasn’t until he got there that he saw the word “b--ch” spray painted across the SUV’s tailgate in white paint. The teen had no idea, he told a deputy, who would deface the family’s car. A deputy photographed the damage.
At 8:36 a.m., a woman called the Sheriff’s Office and said someone slashed all four of her tires. A deputy arrived, noted that the damage looked like knife punctures, and then walked to the rear of the car to check the tag number. But the tag was gone, and the woman said it must have been stolen overnight.
Two minutes later, the Sheriff’s Office got another call about three license plates found at the woodline near Pine Hill Lane. One had been pulled from a red Dodge registered to a Pine Hill Lane resident. A deputy returned it to her.
At 10:40, another Pine Hill Lane resident walked up to the deputy already there working on the stolen tag case. The man said someone stole the tag from his Chevy Impala.
A few minutes later another man came up and said someone took the tag from his Honda Civic.
The last call came from Prosperity Lane, from another resident who found the word “b--ch” painted on the rear of his car, a black Dodge Ram pickup truck, in white paint.
Deputies gave all of the victims case cards and entered information on the stolen tags and damaged vehicles to a crime database.
July 2
So much for the welcome wagon …
12:47 p.m. First block of Pine Hurst Lane. Criminal mischief.
A Pine Hurst Lane resident escaped the local tag-stealing, tire-slashing crime streak on July 1, but found herself a victim of it the next day.
She called the Sheriff’s Office and said her husband woke up July 2 to leave for work and was stymied by two flat tires, both on the driver’s side of the family’s Chevy Astro. They’d been in good condition, she said, the night before.
The woman said the couple had only lived at their Pine Hurst Lane home for a couple of weeks, and didn’t have any local enemies.
A deputy looked at the slash marks and wrote in a report that it looked like they’d been made with a pocket knife.
Where the rubber meets the road
12:20 p.m. First block of Utility Drive. Criminal mischief.
The week’s car carnage wasn’t confined to the P-section.
A manager at a truck fleet storage center called the Sheriff’s Office after finding four slashed truck tires, on three different trucks.
Altogether, the cost of the damage was about $2,700, according to a deputy’s report.
The manager said wasn’t sure who slashed the tires, but said she did have a disgruntled employee who’d complained about the company on Craigslist and hired a lawyer to try to shut it down.
The deputy spoke with the property’s owner, who said he had surveillance cameras on the property, but that they didn’t cover the vandalized trucks.
The deputy uploaded pictures of one of the trucks to a crime database. The other two weren’t available to photograph.
