Houses report property stolen
By Meredith Falzone, Staff Writer
In the early morning of April 13, burglars entered three unlocked townhouse doors in the latest of a series of campus break-ins.
Between the hours of 1:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. on Friday, April 13, townhouses 102, 213 and 303 were robbed of “flat panel television, an iPod, laptop computers and DVDs,” Peter Soons, director of Safety and Security wrote in an e-mail to the college Wednesday April 18.
Resident of townhouse 102, Jessi Eiras, said her laptop was taken from the kitchen table. With her computer gone, Eiras has lost her senior thesis.
“I have hardcopy drafts,” she said. “I guess I’m going to have to retype it.”
Eiras realized her computer was missing after she received a text message around 10 a.m. from her roommate, senior Sheila Regan, who was looking for Eiras’s computer at 6:00 a.m.
Detective Michael Fish from the Colchester Police Department was unsure why the St. Michael’s campus was targeted but said he thinks it is many students do not lock their doors.
“In the 20 years that I have worked here it is very rare that students lock their door,” Fish said. With so many people, and the campus being such a small area Fish said that everything is a vulnerable.
“Cars are a target too,” he said. “If people leave valuables visible they are truly inviting someone in.”
Soons agreed with Fish that students need to keep valuables out of sight. “Locking doors is a big one,” Soons said. “It was the common element in this case.”
Eiras said that she and her housemates do not usually lock their door.
Eiras said she had heard of break-ins happening on campus but never thought that it would happen to her.
“It’s weird being in a house that someone has broken into,” Eiras said. “I feel violated.”
After Eiras received the text message, she called Security. When they arrived they took down information necessary to the case and called Colchester Police. Along with Eiras’s laptop from townhouse 102, two school bags and 50-75 DVDs were stolen. All of the items were stolen from the living area that is in plain view from outside Eiras said.
Nobody knows exactly when the items were stolen but Eiras said that Regan was last to go to bed at around 1:30 a.m. and then got up around 6:00 a.m.
Due to the fact that the townhouses are so close together it is not uncommon to hear doors opening and closing and people outside, Eiras said. “If I heard something I wouldn’t have thought twice.”
According to news reports, some of the stolen items were recovered in a nearby neighborhood.
Contact Meredith Falzone at mfalzone@smcvt.edu
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