The crime: Criminal Mischief
The victim: Kate Cromwell
Location: 6100 block of Vickery
Date: Tuesday, May 27
Time: 7:50 a.m.
The family started its day the usual way.
According to Kate Cromwell, she and her husband went out to the family Subaru Forester to load up their four kids and get them to school on time. That’s when they found that some unauthorized modifications had been made, designed for more airflow — but at a high cost.
“My sports wagon had the front and back windshields broken out,” Cromwell says. “I was parked in front of the house in the street.
“I had heard of other people having bricks thrown at their cars as well. We didn’t notice it until it was too late. There was glass everywhere.”
Cromwell saysthe criminal had to hit the front windshield twice, and he left the brick in the back seat after he had destroyed both windshields.
“My first thought was that it was mostly a big inconvenience that I would have to get it fixed, and a waste of money to fix it,” Cromwell says. “Shame on us for parking in the street. We won’t do that again.”
Cromwell says the family had to park in the street because their garage was full of stuff. It has since been cleaned out, however, and they’ve been parking in the garage since the incident.
It cost the Cromwells $1,000 and a couple of days to fix both windshields.
Senior Cpl. Eddie Crawford says had the vehicle been parked in the driveway, the criminals would have just moved on to the next car parked on the street.
“Welcome to summer,” Crawford says. “It is not a hate crime since there were other cars in the area that met the same fate, but you can blame it on kids having too much free time. I’m assuming that nothing was stolen.”
Most of the houses on that street, Crawford says, have a front driveway and an attached garage.
“I wish I had a nickel for every case like this — I’d be a millionaire,” Crawford says, adding that it’s almost impossible to catch the culprits in these types of crimes, unless they are caught in the act.
“That’s where the nosey neighbors come in,” he says. “If they had a alarm, the [neighbors] would have heard it. You know, alarms are good in houses and cars.”
