Last weekend, several student and University-owned vehicles and bikes had their tires slashed
Junior Corinne Hunt takes a deflated tire off her car. One of the back tires of the car was slashed this weekend in a random incident of vandalism. (Photo courtesy of Corinne Hunt)
By Philip Ellefson, Staff Writer ellefson15@up.edu
Sometime late Saturday, Feb. 9 or early Sunday, Feb. 10, 14 student and University-owned vehicles had their tires slashed.
Director of Public Safety Gerry Gregg said five cars, three Physical Plant carts and six bikes were damaged. All of the vehicles were on campus except two cars belonging to juniors Corinne Hunt and Adrienne Marks.
Hunt and Marks live in a house off campus on near Harvard and Portsmouth St., where their cars were parked in the driveway. They said sometime between 11 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday, one back tire on each car was slashed.
Marks and Hunt were frustrated by the incident.
"I just don't understand the point. If you break into a car, at least you get something out of it," Hunt said. "If you slash someone's tire, it's pointless."
Gregg said the incident was random.
"It doesn't appear that anyone was specifically targeted," Gregg said. "It appears to be very random."
Although Gregg has not seen an incident like this during his time at UP, he said incidents like this are not uncommon.
"In the last three or four months, I recall in The Oregonian where someone wandered through a neighborhood and slashed tires," Gregg said.
Public Safety is investigating the incident, but it is unclear who may be a suspect.
"It could very well have been someone just wandering around who's in no way, shape or form related to our community," Gregg said. "Members of our community don't usually do this within the community, but somebody may have had a weak moment."
Gregg said tire slashers tend to slash only one tire per vehicle, but that this action often forces the victim to replace two tires, due to the fact that tires on the same axle must match.
While Marks was fortunate enough to need to replace only one tire, the vandalism still inconvenienced her.
"It was time-consuming to get to Les Schwab, and the one on Lombard didn't have the right tires, so we had to go to the one on Columbia," Marks said.
Marks and Hunt were also frustrated that little can be done about incidents like this one.
"There's really no evidence," Hunt said. "You can't do anything."
"All you can do is report it and make it a statistic," Marks said.
(The Beacon)
Adrienne Marks (The Beacon)
Corinne Hunt (The Beacon)
