Have a blue Subaru? You might want to keep an eye on it.
In the past month, several Glenwood Springs residents have had their cars vandalized, and there appears to be a pattern.
Each person reports that his or her blue Subaru has been scratched with a key or some other kind of sharp-edged tool.
When Jacki Lohman’s midnight blue Outback was keyed in October, she was upset.
Lohman and her husband had parked on Blake Street and went to the Ghost Walk event.
She commented to her husband that evening how nice it was to live in a community with low crime.
“The irony of it was that we woke up the next morning and had been vandalized,” Lohman said.
When she took it to the auto shop for $5,000 paint job, the mechanics told her they were working on a similar Subaru that was also scratched in the same way.
Lohman posted pictures of the damage Oct. 21 on a popular Facebook community group.
“If it happened to me and someone else, then maybe there’s somebody out there who has a vendetta with someone who has a blue Subaru,” Lohman said in an interview.
Nearly a month later, Brynn Hays posted on another community group that her blue Outback had been scratched.
Hays noticed the scratch on the passenger side of her vehicle when she was outside Lowes on Tuesday.
“It’s kind of unsettling for our little valley town,” Hays said. “I can’t fathom why somebody would do that to someone else. It’s just crazy to me.”
The police officially closed Lohman’s case without any leads, but if it’s a pattern, Lohman believes there might be cause to reopen an investigation.
Neither Lohman nor Hays can think of someone angry enough with them to scratch their car.
“I feel like a lot of people drive blue Subaru Outback here. It’s a staple of Colorado,” Hays said.
Since blue Subarus are so prevalent, it is possible it’s a random occurrence.
Whether the recent vandalism to blue Subarus is a targeted pattern by one individual or coincidence, it is typically difficult for police to catch a suspect for keying a car.
“Most of the time, it’s pretty hard to prove” who keyed a car, acting Glenwood Springs Police chief Bill Kimminau said.
If someone is caught on camera scratching a car, or there was a witness, that makes it easier to identify suspects.
“Every once in a while you get lucky and whoever did it starts to run their mouth to somebody about what they did,” Kimminau added.
But in general, most instances of car scratching isn’t random.
“A lot of times, whoever the victim is has an idea of who (the suspect) is. It’s usually not random, somebody is mad about somebody else about something,” Kimminau said.
