Junior Alyssa Butcher stumbles to her car, heartbroken to find her driver’s window shattered into tiny, clear pieces, and her bright green and blue Vera Bradley wallet no longer in the passenger seat. Butcher marched with the band at the football game against McKinney early that evening, but after coming back from a long bus ride, she found her car broken into.
“I thought ‘oh crap…’ and I just kind of stood there in complete shock, because that’s a scary thing to have happen to anyone,” Butcher said. “My first reaction was to call my mom, and right after I told her what happened, she said to call the police right away.”
Butcher wasn’t the only one to have shattered glass underneath her car.
Seniors Baylee Slemp and Dylan Peacock also found their windows scattered to pieces on the ground waiting for them at their vehicles.
“The first thing that really popped into my head was ‘looks like I’ll be staying at the school a little bit longer,’” Peacock said. “I tried to make jokes with the other people that weren’t so happy to help lighten up the mood.”
Peacock’s attempt to get the eerie mood cheerful again lasted only a few short minutes, when Slemp walked to her red car to discover her iPad and wallet stolen from the backseat.
“First, I hyperventilated and screamed a few words,” Slemp said. “Then I called the cops in the process.”
The police officer looked over the cars to ensure a broken window as the only damage. Once he wrote everything down, filed a police report and the parents of the students arrived to the parking lot, the officer took a rubber glove and gently pushed the remaining pieces of glass out of the windows so Butcher, Slemp and Peacock could drive home safely. After the incident, students throughout Legacy became more cautious about taking their valuables with them instead of leaving them open to the public in the car.
“I take it all with me and lock it in my band locker during the day, so I know it’s always going to be safe and sound,” Butcher said. “Leaving something valuable in the car like that just isn’t worth it.”
Not only did three cars from Legacy get broken into, but three other cars at Mansfield High School did as well. When the officer arrived at Legacy, he spoke to the victims of the robbery, shocked to say that he had seen the same case just 30 minutes earlier. The Mansfield Police Department isn’t positive who committed this crime, but they continue to watch the video footage taken with security cameras located on all corners of the mansfield schools.
“If I could see the thieves today, I would probably say ‘Nice try’ because they didn’t steal anything from me, not even my $2,000 trumpet sitting right there in the backseat,” Peacock said.
