PICKERINGTON, Ohio — It’s an inconvenience that, more and more, is becoming infuriating.
“I really didn’t know much of it until this happened,” Scott Duncan.
Duncan learned about it from a neighbor. It was a text saying his driver’s side back window had been busted out.
“It’s just that if that’s the car that fits whatever they want…the make, model, what you have…they don’t care,” he said.
Thieves tried to steal his work car that he uses to teach student drivers.
“It’s not like it hides from everything,” he said of the car that is labeled with its business name around the vehicle. “[The car] stands out like a sore thumb.”
Also standing out is that name that has been in the media many times in the past couple months.
“We’re seeing a lot of that in Pickerington, mostly coming from Columbus,” Det. Sgt. Shawn Mikicic said. “Yes, sir, the Kia boys.”
The Kia boys, according to police, are groups of juveniles known for breaking in and stealing vehicles made by Hyundai and Kia. The reason the thieves target certain models made by those manufacturers is that they are easy to steal.
Mikicic is with the Pickerington Police Department and says the number of break-ins is up. Just last week there were five incidents where vehicles were broken into. Since March, the department has taken 41 reports, Mikicic says.
Duncan’s was from last Thursday morning when he was one of two locations hit in less than an hour.
By Friday morning, another house in his neighborhood was hit.
Mikicic says his department is working with the juvenile courts to bring charges against those responsible. And, contrary to what some people might believe, Mikicic says juveniles are being punished.
For Duncan, it’s the inconvenience of the cleanup, the paperwork and the repairs that could put the temporary brakes on his summer income.
“There’s a potential that things will have to get delayed,” he said. “Because the repair with this is going to be a little bit more than…it wasn’t just as simple as replace the window and I’m good to go.”