9OYS Crime Alert

Dozens awake to find car windshields shattered by 'BB gun vandals'

CREATED Nov. 25, 2012

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  • It's a dangerous, expensive game of target practice, that left dozens in one Tucson neighborhood to pick up the pieces and foot the bill. Video by kgun9.com

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 Reporter: Maggie Vespa

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - It's a dangerous, expensive game of target practice, that left dozens in one Tucson neighborhood to pick up the pieces and foot the bill.  

This after police say a grou of vandals drove up and down area streets in the early morning hours Sunday, shooting out car windshields, house after house, block after block.

 

Neighbors counted at least 20 victims on the 100 block of London Stage alone.  Police now say the total number?  At least twice that, spanning 3 or 4 blocks.
 
 
Their stories are as repetitive as the crime.
 
"I woke up this morning, and came out to get the Sunday paper," said Nick Stair.
 
"Uh, came out a little bit after 8, saw these neighbors over here and saw a cop," said William Butierez.
 
 
 
"And my neighbor says 'Excuse me.  Everybody's window is smashed in,'" said Marybeth Graziano.
 
All three found the back windshields of their SUVs, like their neighbors', shattered.  For most, the scope of the damage was difficult to digest.
 
"It seemed to be everybody on the whole side of this street," said Stair.  "And then more neighbors came over from the other side of the neighborhood saying that they had the same thing happening over there."
 
 
 
"You're kind of just in shock, you know.  Like what happened?" said Butierez.
 
It's a sense of shock shared by police.
 
"From time to time you will get a rash of these kind of things, but I haven't seen anything of this scale in this neighborhood," said TPD Sergeant Jeremy Williams says sometime in the early morning hours, a group of vandals, likely juveniles he says, drove down several streets southwest of Broadway & Houghton.
 
Using a BB gun, they targeted SUVs and large cars, leaving little evidence behind.
 
"(Is it going to be difficult to pin point who did this?)  Well, it might be tough initially, but usually people talk, and when they do we can hopefully come up with some leads and find out who did this," he said.
 
Meantime residents are on a search of their own for answers in a senseless, costly prank.
 
"This is probably going to be well over $1,000 worth of damage because a lot of the mechanisms here are broken off," said Stair.
 
 
 
"They don't realize how much money it costs people, and you know, we have to go to work," said Graziano.  "How do we get to work?"
 
 
 
"A couple days after Thanksgiving, what drives a person to want to go around and shoot out on our street alone 20+ cars?" said Butierez.  "I don't know about the other neighborhoods, but that's ridiculous."