TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - The Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office is investigating 15 incidents of vandalism that happened early Sunday morning.
Sheriff Bob Goldsmith said the first call came in around 2:30 a.m. and that TCSO is still receiving calls.
He said two or three male teenagers driving an SUV-type vehicle are responsible. He said they went to homes and threw landscape rocks through windows.
The Spall family is one of those 15 families impacted by the vandalism. They said living in the Butler Meadows neighborhood has been very safe.
"This has been a real good community where we have not noticed any crime or anything like that," said Jason Spall.
"Very safe," agreed Jessica Spall.
However, they still invested in a good outdoor security camera system, including a Ring door bell, and it came in handy Sunday morning when the group of vandals came to their home.
"We heard kind of a crashing sound at about 3:20 in the morning," said Jessica. "We checked our house, checked our kids everything was fine and then we noticed on our Ring camera on our phones there had been something thrown at our front door."
They caught the vandals in action on their security cameras. On the Ring door bell footage, you see a vehicle pull up on their street and you see three people get out. One runs toward the house, grabs the Spall's lighthouse lawn ornament and throws it at the front door and the Ring door bell. The lighthouse smashes to pieces and then the culprits run back to the car.
"Then we also noticed that, we have a Cubs rock here, that was actually tossed at our front window," said Jason.
That window is where the Spall's 8-year-old son was sleeping. In the Ring door bell footage, you see a second person in the background pick something up off the ground and throw it at the front of the house. You can hear the smashing of the window glass.
"Thankfully his bed is not right by it but my concern was if his bed had been under the window he would have been seriously injured from the glass," said Jessica
Several of the Spall's neighbors also had damage. One neighbor had a window on their garage door shattered. Another neighbor also had a front facing window broken. Other neighbors said they remember being woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of loud voices outside, yelling expletives.
The Spalls say they are grateful for their investment in security cameras and encourage others to do the same.
"You can always replace windows and items like that but your sense of security is something that's a little bit different," said Jason. "Just be aware of your surroundings and if you've ever thought about getting something like a door bell camera or something like it, it really is worth it for these types of incidences."
"We just hope that with the footage we got that they can be found and we can have some justice because what happened is not ok," said Jessica.
Sheriff Goldsmith said there were no calls of burglary and that there were no injuries. He also said these appeared to be random acts.
Lafayette Police Department said they did not have any calls of vandalism of this nature in their jurisdiction.
Please call TCSO with any information at 765-423-9388.
News 18 is speaking with people affected by these acts of vandalism. This story will be updated.
