http://visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs. ... /610020309Vandals shoot windows
Police investigate citywide damage to car windows
By David Castellon
Staff writer
It was a bad weekend for dozens of Visalia car owners whose windows were broken or shot out with a pellet gun over the weekend.
"To the best of my knowledge, they have been all over the city" starting Friday night and continuing through the weekend, Visalia police Steve Shear said Sunday of the acts of vandalism.
"I don't have an exact number," he said of the vandalism spree. "But I can say it has been dozens."
Steve Hines, who had one of the windows on his Dodge Caravan shot out some time Saturday morning and then another shot out Saturday night or Sunday morning, said police investigating the vandalism told him that by that point the department had received reports of at least 50 cars with broken windows.
"I noticed it in the morning, a little after 9 o'clock" Saturday, said Hines.
He said that the rear passenger side window on his van was completely shattered, sending kernels of glass all over the interior of the van as well as on the roof and on the ground beside the vehicle.
It was a pain to clean up once, he said, but then he had to do it again when he discovered Sunday morning that the rear passenger window on the other side of the van had been broken, while it was parked in front of his Tulare Avenue home in southwest Visalia.
Across town to the northwest, Malcolm Hoag had parked his old pickup truck overnight on Hurley Avenue west of Akers Street with a sign advertising his garage sale Sunday morning. Around 10 a.m. a customer came over and informed him that one of the windows on his truck had been shattered.
Hoag said a police officer told him that a pellet gun had done the damage.
A few blocks away, Bob Haworth had black plastic covering the spot where the back window used to be on his wife's Toyota Sienna minivan Sunday after somebody shot out the glass while it was parked in the driveway of his home in the 400 block of North Cottonwood Street.
"The whole thing was shattered," he said.
Haworth said he and his wife will have to pay the full cost of the repairs because the deductible for his car insurance is $500 and the three estimates he's gotten to replace the glass are between $450 to $480.
Haworth said he also knew of at least one other car besides Hoag's that had a window broken, probably in the same vandalism spree.
Shear said investigators would not disclose many details about the acts of vandalism, including verifying if they suspect pellet guns were used to shatter all the windows.
They also would not say who might be responsible, though Shear said Sunday that no arrests had been made.
Haworth had his own guess of who was responsible.
"Oh, it's kids, I'm sure, out for some reason to destroy things, vent, whatever," he said.
Hines agreed.
"They've got nothing better to do, that's my guess," he said, noting that he'll also probably have to pay a large chunk of the window repair costs out of his own pocket.
For Hoag, the cost will not be so bad.
"It will be more of an inconvenience for me," he said, explaining that his pickup is "kind of a salvage" vehicle, and he will just go to a junk yard and find a replacement window.
"I forgive them," he said of whoever broke his window. "Some other people may not."
Haworth added, "I don't think they realize when they do this sort of damage it's a felony."
And, he said, if police catch whoever is responsible, he and others whose cars were damaged likely will go after them or — if it was minors who were responsible — their parents to pay them back for the cost of having to fix the windows.
# The reporter can be reached at dcastell@visalia.gannett.com.
More freaking money down the drain. Have to pay 250 dollars to get a new window installed. My sisters zx3 got hit as well. Kinda fucked up if you ask me. Im sick and tired of my car being a constant target for asshats. Ive had my car constanly egg'd(paint on the drivers side is fucked up), my tires slashed, and now this shit. My car has barely turned one year old, and ive already spent more money then I would of liked repairing it.
Thats why I bought the cudas, to cover some of the damage done to my drivers side.
sorry about all the bad luck.
Sam-I-Am
That is what he told the cops at least.
