the curse continues

[cellio]

Sigh. It's a good thing I'm not superstitious, or right about now I'd be starting to think about replacing the cursed car.

Sometime during the 25 minutes I was at tonight's minyan, some bastard smashed the driver-side window in my car. It does not appear that he attempted to steal the stereo or the car itself (no damage to stereo or steering column). He dumped the contents of the glove box and apparently rifled through things. (For reasons unknown, he also put the visor down -- but it's a semi-porous surface so it doesn't show prints.)

This was a mysterious act of vandalism until I realized that the only thing missing was the garage-door opener.

That's very clever. Break into a car, pick up the garage-door opener, get the owner's address from the registration card, and hope for an atached garage that will let you break into the house in relative solitude later. (Open garage, walk in, close garage door behind you, work on the house lock at your leisure.) I'm surprised I thought of it mere seconds before the police officer said something.

We have a detatched garage, so about all he'll be able to steal is the sukkah and I don't think he wants that. I suppose he could also return in the dead of night to work on stealing the car; there's not much I can do about that except make sure there's nothing valuable in the car. An auto-glass service is supposed to come in the morning. Completely coincidentally, we're getting the garage-door opener replaced anyway.

I have no evidence about the car alarm. Did it sound? If it did, no one responded, but I wouldn't expect them to. And if it went off, the thief hung around for at least a bit.

Some data about the Pittsburgh police: they came about half an hour after I called; given that there was at least one robbery (armed?) and one sounded-like-mugging nearby being talked about on the radio, that's not surprising. The officer who responded was polite and professional, and he asked if I'd like them to dust for prints. (You could have knocked me over with a feather. Dust for prints? For something less severe than violence or burglary? Wow.) We found a good candidate print on the outside of the car, but when the prints folks showed up (within 15 minutes) they couldn't get anything. They did, however, sweep much of the glass off of the driver's seat for me before leaving, saving me the challenge of getting the car home unbloodied. (Yeah, it's safety glass. But there were a lot of looked-like-shards.)

Comments

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! On all counts!

Glad to hear you weren't in the car when this creep decided to do this. I didn't think about the garage door opener--my parents always locked the door going into the house from the garage, but I do know some people who don't. If you don't mind, I'm going to pass along your story so they can see what can happen! (Sometimes obvious things aren't so obvious...)

I hope getting the window replacement is a lot easier than the last trip to the dealership. *sigh*

[cellio]

If I had an attached garage, I would always lock the connecting door to the house. Garages are just too easy to crack. Houses may be easy to crack too, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't apply basic precautions.

Feel free to pass this along; it's a public entry.

I hope getting the window replacement is a lot easier than the last trip to the dealership.

I did not interact with the dealer, which undoubtedly improved my odds. :-) I called an auto-glass place and they sent someone out this morning. Once he got the part and got here it took him about half an hour, and that included the time he spent vacuuming glass shards out of the car.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I had this happen to me once. I still have that car... and I bet there are safety-glass bits still under the back seat. (They busted a back window, which on a 1981 Toyota Starlet is far easier to replace than a front window.)

I'm sorry that this happened...

[cellio]

The guy warned me that I'll probably still be finding glass bits in a year. This isn't my first smashed window, so I believe him. (One vandal, one accident, both a long time ago.)