Dec. 20 — Vandals damage windows

Chris Albert / of the Herald

A spur of shootings have damaged storefront windows in downtown Puyallup.

Police believe at least two people have driven past businesses and shot at store windows with a pellet gun. In November, the store front window at Linda’s Custom Flowers on North Meridian was shot out. Later, multiple businesses on the east side of downtown suffered window damage from the pellet gun culprits.

The vandalism has the Puyallup Main Street Association working to put together a fund to reward anyone who might have information that leads to an arrest, said Dave Eatwell, executive director.

Often, business owners have flowers and other decor in front of their shops and people passing by pick them or damage them in some way, he said.

“That’s just an on-going thing,” Eatwell said. “When someone shoots out an $800 window with a pellet gun, that’s a problem.”

Currently, the Puyallup Police Department has no suspects, said Sgt. Bob Thompson.

What has been difficult in this case and many like it is there were no witnesses, he said.

“The worst part about it is we’re not around or we hear about it after the fact,” Thompson said. “We can’t be everywhere.”

People calling in suspicious activity is the best tool the police can use to catch vandals, Thompson said. Even if the people aren’t doing anything wrong, leave it up to the police to make that decision, he said.

“The more people that call that are suspicious of something, the more we have a chance of catching somebody,” Thompson said. “Be a good witness and call the police department and tell us.”

In Thompson’s 20 plus years of police work, activity like the pellet gun vandalism is usually a random sort of activity, but sometimes businesses are targeted by someone who has it out for the merchant.

In the 1990s, there was a case where a group of vandals busted out 45 to 50 vehicle windows. The vandals had targeted one vehicle because of a grudge and then decided to keep busting out windows randomly, he said.

“We were able to catch the guys due to somebody calling in,” Thompson said.