Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
MURRAY — Police are looking for an individual who vandalized more than two dozen vehicles at a local used car dealership sometime Friday night into Saturday morning.
Murray Police officials said they are investigating the vandalism, but had no leads on any potential suspects as of Saturday morning.
The vandalism happened sometime between 9:15 p.m. Friday and 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning at Central Auto on 4545 S. Main St. in Murray, according to Russ Smith, the dealership’s general manager.
Smith said the unknown vandal used some sort of sharp object to scratch 32 vehicles, possibly a key. He originally estimated the damage at more than $50,000, but after further inspection of the damage, now believes that number could be more than $75,000.
Smith said an employee noticed the damage Saturday morning after a sales meeting.
"The first vehicle we spotted was big Ford truck and someone had gone to town on the side of the truck with keys or a screwdriver or something like that," Smith said. "As we walked further, we saw another one and it ended up being 32 different vehicles that someone took some aggression out on our cars.
"(The cuts) are pretty deep. Some of them are into the metal," he added. "There's quite a few cars that are going to have to be repainted completely. The more we get into this, it's going up in damage."
He said the staff was initially “down” after finding the vehicles — about 30 percent of their inventory — damaged, especially with no certainty if they would recover the costs.
Smith estimated that it may take weeks for all of the vehicles to be completely repaired and added that insurance covered the cost of some of the damage, but not all.
However, he said the company has received support already from the community since the vandalism.
"It was a very serious blow," he said. "I'm angry ... but the good news is that we've had some support and we're keeping a positive attitude about it and we'll get through this just fine."
Smith said he wasn't sure if the vandal targeted the Murray business specifically or if vehicles from other dealerships in the area also had been vandalized overnight.
"We're not sure if we were targeted, but someone spent some time and effort to damage our cars," he said.
Smith said the business does have a security camera system, but the system did not record at the time the vandalism occurred and the company was hoping to rely on record systems from surrounding businesses to potentially figure out who vandalized the vehicles.
Anyone with information is asked to call police at 801-840-4000.
Contributing: Geoffrey Thatcher, Dan Bammes
