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Sam Penrod Reporting Burglars strike again at yet another Orem Elementary school, but this time the thieves get away with critical information.
In just the last week, three elementary schools in Orem have been burglarized. Now school officials at Bonneville Elementary are scrambling after discovering schools two computer servers were stolen.
Police can't tell exactly when the schools were broken into, but two of them appear to be related--thieves getting into the schools with no sign of forced entry, then selectively stealing school computers.
When the principal of Bonneville Elementary School in Orem returned from vacation yesterday, he couldn't log onto his computer. When he went to reboot the file server, he found it was missing.
Kim Roper, Principal: “We lost two file servers and it was really more damaging to the school that we lost the date than the computers; all of the school information is gone."
All of the work completed by the school staff this summer, including which classes students are going to be in, is gone.
This is the third break-in reported to police just this week. Last weekend, at Westmore Elementary someone tried to get inside, but apparently gave up after cutting themselves on a window they'd broken out. On Monday, officials at Windsor Elementary discovered 12-thousand dollars in computer equipment had been stolen. This latest discovery has detectives believing someone is targeting the schools.
Lt. Doug Edwards, Orem Police Dept.: “It's impossible to say if it was definitely the same person, but it is certainly suspicious -- the three schools targeted in such a short period of time and similar items taken from both of them."
Investigators are looking at possible leads in the case. But with the school year about to begin, the loss of the school information is extremely frustrating to employees who've worked all summer getting ready for the school year.
Kim Roper: "We were already for school and to begin and now we have to start all over as far as placing students in classes."
School officials do have backups of school records, but the last backup was when school got out, so they are starting over with all the work they did this summer.
