A motor vehicle in the Keene State College Winchester lot was broken into and almost stolen on Friday, March 24.
KSC Campus Safety was alerted of this incident and sent out an email on Monday, March 27. In it, they state that the vehicle has minor damages and was broken into by two suspects walking in from Winchester Street. The two suspects were “described as two white males wearing black clothing and baseball hats, the email stated. There is an active investigation of this matter.
Assistant Director of Campus Safety Leonard Crossman said this sort of incident is not common and typically people look for cars that are easy targets. “Very rarely do people break into other people’s cars like you see in the movies,” he said. “Typically we have maybe one incident per year.”
He said in the last few years, there’s been one incident in both 2015 and 16 and two in 2014. “So in the last three years, we haven’t had any confirmed stolen motor vehicles, but usually once a year we have a report of it,” he explained.
Crossman said there are a few reasons why someone might try stealing a car. “Obviously if you know how to do this and you do it the right way, you can make a profit. Cars can be pretty valuable,” he said. “We have other people who may take a car simply because they have to get some place and they abandon it somewhere else.”
Crossman said what actually is common is students “borrowing” their friends cars without asking. “They don’t intend to totally deprive the person of their vehicle, but they’re taking it without their permission,” he said.
Crossman said this particular situation was most likely not that sort of case. The two suspects don’t appear to be students. “They came from an off campus location, so that may be an indication they’re not from our community,” Crossman said. He explained that students should be checking on their cars on a regular basis. “Sometimes somebody will leave their car out in the lot for a few weeks at a time. You should check on it, make sure it’s still there and someone didn’t bump into it.”
Another situation that Crossman said occurs is that students just forget where they’ve parked their car and call with concerns of it being stolen. “It’s not that common but we probably get one every semester, where somebody just can’t find their vehicle,” he said.
He said there are measures students and others can take to prevent their car being stolen. “At lot of people hid their keys in their gas caps for example and people know to look there. So making sure the keys aren’t available and there’s nothing that’s valuable that’s visible,” he said. “If anything happens, they can just call us, we work closely with Keene Police Department.”
He said if the suspects do turn out being students, they would not go through the college for punishment. “Theft is a pretty serious crime, so the punishment would likely be very severe,” Crossman said.
KSC senior Taylor Brands said he was both surprised and not surprised to hear about the incident. “I know there are incidents of crime in Keene. I see a lot of shady activity, so I’m not too surprised it happen, but still somewhat surprised.”
He said he thinks it’s unlikely it’s students that did the act. “Why would they?” he questioned. Brands said he appreciated the email being sent out. He said, “It makes you think more about it.”
Dorothy England can be contacted at dengland@kscequinox.com
