Hit by the Mad Tire Slasher of Hyde Park

For years now, Hyde Park has had someone—or maybe more than one someone— who goes around randomly slashing car tires at intervals.  Since at least the early ’90s, the pattern has been that a small cluster of cars will get slashed, and then whoever-it-is goes away or gets locked up or something, and nothing happens for months after.  There doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern to where in the neighborhood he hits, although the recent incidents I’ve heard about were south of 45th and west of Speedway.  About the only pattern anyone has ever been able to figure out is that he cuts the tires of cars parked on the street, usually taking out two tires at once on a car to cause the most bother and expense.  Opinion in the neighborhood association is that it may be someone who’s protesting cars parked on the street, maybe a pedestrian who can’t walk exactly where he’d like to walk right that second because a car’s in his way.

Last night was my turn.  L and I went out to Piet last night about eight-thirty to go pick up the Mercury from the shop where it had been getting fixed on, and as I pulled out of the driveway I felt the rumble and wobbly steering that always means a flat tire, so I pulled right over to the curb.  When I got out and looked, I found an angled U-shaped flap of rubber sticking out of the sidewall of the right front tire, fairly obviously cut.  I changed it, pitched the bad tire in the bed, and we went on to get the car.  When I went to get a new tire at Goodyear this afternoon, I found the sidewall had been cut completely through to ruin the tire.

This morning when L went out to take T to school and and M to day care, she found the right front tire of the car, next the curb, flat.  After trying to break the lug nuts loose without success, she called AAA to come put the spare on, then hauled the flat over to Goodyear to get it fixed.  They told her it wasn’t fixable, because . . . there was an X-shaped cut through the sidewall where, it appeared, someone had stabbed the tire twice to ruin it.

Now one tire going flat can be a random accident, but the same tire flat on two vehicles, and the tires cut through the sidewall to ruin them—to believe that a coincidence would stretch too far.  That was malicious mischief, within the meaning of the act. amd I’m betting it’s the work of the Mad Tire Slasher.  And not only that, he had to have come by at least twice:  once before eight-thirty to cut Piet’s tire, and again sometime after nine to cut the Mercury’s tire.  Even odder is that he had to walk up into our yard to get to Piet, who was pulled well into the driveway, away from the entrance.  Before now he’s generally left cars in driveways alone.  I can only guess that he took out his spleen on both cars because the one was in the street.

I had T call the incident in to the police department’s non-emergency line, but there’s just about sweet F.A. they can do about it.  That kind of vandalism doesn’t leave useful forensic clues, as I learned from others who’ve had this happen.  All we can do is to spend $150 that we don’t have buying two tires so we can get everyone to work, and school, and day care, and everywhere else we have to go.  And it isn’t even going to stop anyone parking on the street.  Our driveway only has room for one car, so there’s nowhere but the street for us to park the other.  All that really happened was that some malicious, anonymous jerk got to dump some of his bile on us and cause us extra expense and inconvenience.

A yellow sine wave is indisputable.  Fnord.