Tionna De Freitas, Staff Writer

Utica Police and Utica College’s Campus Safety say they have no clues into a spree of vandalism during the overnight hours of Friday, March 4 into Saturday morning that left seven cars damaged. This damage included a car that was flipped onto its roof in the North Hall parking lot.

All cars that were damaged belonged to UC students. The car that was flipped has been totaled and all the other vehicles had their windshield wipers and side view mirrors ripped off.

“It’s not something that happens all the time,” Campus Safety Director Wayne Sullivan said. “We’ve had vandalism on our campus before, but not to this extent. We think this was definitely targeted and intentional. We have a couple things that we’re working on that I won’t disclose, but we’re going to figure this out.”

The car was seen and reported by someone attending the America’s Greatest Heart Run and Walk event on Saturday morning at the college.

Most people are wondering why it was not seen or heard the night it happened and believe it took the vandalists some time to complete.

“All that chaos and carnage that was created over there probably took less than five minutes,” Sullivan said. “When everybody heard about it, they all said they had to be there for hours, not at all. It must’ve been a lot of noise but they were in and out in less than a minute. It took a few guys and then to run around the parking lot and do what they did to the others was nothing, it was a hit and run type of thing.”

Sullivan also said the vandals were not looking for anything inside of the cars that may have provoked the vandalism.

“They didn’t take anything from cars, there was a few dollars worth of change on the ground next to the car, so they were just looking to do some damage,” Sullivan said.

Campus Safety increased the number of patrols on campus following the incident.

“No one is going to do that type of thing when we’re around, more coverage is our best bet to keep anything like that from happening again,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan also added that keeping valuables out of plain sight and making sure to park in well-lit areas are precautions to take as well.

An anonymous tip line is available for anyone with information, as well as a $500 reward for information leading to the identification of those responsible.