Juvenile Charged In Mailbox Spree

“They were partying. They got bored. They decided to pull mailboxes,” a police investigator says of the motive for a vandalism spree that trashed well over 30 mailboxes and house number posts in the Lockwood Drive area.

“They thought it would be fun to do,” the officer said after interrogating a 16-year-old male juvenile whom police say was the ringleader of the crew of young people participating in the destruction.

After an extended police investigation, Clinton police said the 16-year old was charged with 23 counts of criminal mischief and referred to juvenile authorities in the court system.

The vandalism occurred on two nights – one in mid-July and the second earlier this month – when the boy and some friends were spending the night at a female friend’s house, police said.

In the July spree, police said, “They were at a party, and they left to walk to the house where they were going to spend the night. They got bored, so they went out again, and started pulling mail boxes.”

Instead of the usual summer teenage pastime of smashing mailboxes with a baseball bat, this group physically yanked mailboxes out of the ground, smashing some and discarding others, including a few tossed into the bed of a resident’s pickup truck. In one case, a large wooden sign was torn out of the ground and left in the middle of the street, police said.

About eight mail boxes were yanked from the ground in the July episode, police said. The group extended the destructive romp in the August follow-up, ruining about 15 mail boxes at homes along Lockwood Drive, Brickyard Road, Fieldbrook Avenue, Lake Circle.

Police said they began questioning young people they found in the area, and eventually developed the information that led them to the ringleader.

“Everyone said he did it, and had bragged about it,” an investigator said. “Some of the kids said they yelled at him for doing it.”

Police said at least four other youths may have been involved as participants or at least present during the vandalism.

Police said they are continuing to investigate eight or nine additional instances of vandalism that took place on Silver Birch Drive, in which house number posts were destroyed, and an as yet undetermined number of acts of vandalism on Glenwood Road.

Police are estimating the damage at $50 per mailbox, or more than $1,150 as the investigation continues.