By Christa Keele
Vandals caused thousands of dollars in damage to 39 BYU vehicles over the weekend.
Sometime between 10 p.m. Saturday, (Nov. 4, 2006) and 6 a.m. Monday, (Nov. 6, 2006) individuals entered the physical plant, located just south of the ROTC building, where the grounds department houses its vehicles, and broke windshields, taillights, mirrors and headlights and did major body damage to numerous vehicles.
The vehicles damaged included tractors, pick-up trucks, a GEM cart and other service vehicles of a various sizes and varieties.
'We had 20 licensed vehicles and 19 tractors damaged and I would guess there''s $20,000 worth of damage to the licensed vehicles and probably that much to the tractors as well,' said Scott Sherwood, director of Transportation Services for BYU. 'And I would say that''s a conservative guess.'
While the repairs of these vehicles will be covered by insurance, the insurance money still comes from BYU, Sherwood said.
'The big picture is BYU probably lost $40,000,' Sherwood said.
Police suspect the assailants climbed a fence surrounding the compound the vehicles were contained in and used bricks to do damage to the vehicles, most of which will require new windshields or specialty parts.
'Lots of the parts we need are not exactly things you stock,' said Chad Christensen, a technician with Techna-Glass helping with repairs to the vehicles. 'We will have to have windshields specially cut and tempered to fit most of these vehicles; this will easily take up to a week to get done, it''s not easy.'
The incident is under investigation and University Police request students report any information regarding the crime.