Separate incidents of vandalism have been reported at Rock Channel and Fishmarket Road this week. Two incidents of tyre-slashing occurred on Monday night, November 6.
Margaret Houselander, who lives at Ferry Cottage, Rock Channel had parked her car outside her gate at 6pm that evening after returning from shopping. When she came to start the car next morning, she heard a gravelly noise and got out to investigate, thinking she had run over a traffic cone perhaps. Instead, she found the nearside front and back tyres slashed. “Fortunately”, she said “my kind neighbours at Car Craft came and fitted two new tyres for me and I’m just making them some mince pies to say thank you”.
She had tried phoning the police on the non-emergency line but couldn’t get through. A call to Crime Stoppers was met with an automated voice, giving another number to ring. After repeated efforts she eventually got through and was given a crime and reference number eleven digits long, but no follow up. Thrown onto her resources, she intends to install CCTV outside her home at her own expense.
That same morning she had heard that another neighbour, who lives in Fishmarket Road has also had tyres slashed on her car, whilst parked nearby in the car-park. Margaret Houselander recalled two other incidents, one of a petrol cap being wrenched off (costing £20 to replace) and another of a pellet being fired at her conservatory window.
Yet another nearby resident at Rock Channel had suffered a broken rear windscreen from a pellet shot some while previously. Her experience of the police response had been: “If you tell us who did it, we will come and talk to them”.