Vandals Target SUV Windows

The quiet of the night has been shattered in recent days across the east San Gabriel Valley by vandals shooting out the windows of more than 300 vehicles.

Their primary target: SUVs.

As if things weren’t bad enough for owners of the gas guzzlers during this time of skyrocketing fuel prices, someone is using BBs or pellets to smash their windows in an area ranging from Azusa to Chino Hills.

“The vehicle of choice seems to be SUVs or other large vehicles such as vans and motor homes,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Det. David Lopez.

“In Diamond Bar, we had reports of about 150 incidents over the last weekend,” he said. “They were discovered early Mother’s Day. Now similar reports are coming in from all over.”

In the affluent bedroom community of 56,000, most of the vehicles were parked on the street when the vandals struck late at night. So angry is Emil Ayad of Diamond Bar about the shattered window of his 1999 Lincoln Navigator that he’s offering a $1,000 reward to find whoever broke it. “I’d like to see them behind bars,” he said. “They’re a bunch of cowards.”

Ayad said he got a rude awakening on Mother’s Day. Ayad then saw that he wasn’t alone. “I drove down the street, and there were four or five car windows shattered to pieces, all SUVs,” he said.

Glendora Police Det. Jamie Caldwell is searching for clues to who is responsible for more than 60 smashed windows.

Caldwell hypothesizes that the shooters aren’t some ideological group bent on the destruction of annoyingly large vehicles. Instead, he said, “I suspect they’re the vehicle of choice because their windows present a larger target.”

Glendora, Chino Hills and Diamond Bar bore the brunt of the attacks, with incidents reported in Azusa, Covina, San Dimas and West Covina.