BURGLARS, VANDALS ATTACK FIVE SCHOOLS.Byline: Greg Botonis Staff Writer PALMDALE - Five Palmdale schools were burglarized and vandalized over the weekend, resulting in more than $25,000 in damage and stolen property, an official said Wednesday. The intruders pried pried 1 v. Past tense and past participle of pry1. open doors, broke windows, ripped open vending machines and flooded a gymnasium at one school and started a fire in a trash can In the Macintosh, a simulated garbage can used for deleting files and folders. The trash can keeps the files intact in case the user wants to restore them, but can be "emptied" from time to time to save disk space. at another. The fire did not spread. ``Especially in these times of budget crunching, we don't need all this happening,'' said Palmdale School District The Palmdale School District is a school district that serves a major part of the city of Palmdale, California (USA). The Palmdale School District was first formed in 1888. Approximately 28,000 students are enrolled in the Palmdale School District. spokesman Isaac Barcelona. Officials aren't sure whether the break-ins at Buena Vista, Quail Valley, Tamarisk tamarisk (tăm`ərĭsk), shrub or small tree of the genus Tamarix, native chiefly to the Mediterranean area and to central Asia. The plants are often heathlike and thrive in arid and coastal regions. , Chaparral and Mesquite schools were all done by the same intruders, but say the timing indicates they could have been. At each school, officials believe the vandals used a large knife to pry open doors. The knife was found at one school. Damage and theft losses were heaviest - about $10,000 - at Buena Vista, where offenders struck both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, the offenders ripped the faces off several vending machines and stole money. They also destroyed a stamp machine stamp machine n → máquina (expendedora) de sellos stamp machine n → distributeur m de timbres stamp machine stamp n , set off two fire extinguishers and flooded the gymnasium. On Sunday, intruders stole videocassette recorders, video cameras, laptop computers and a pressure washer A pressure washer is a mechanical device that uses high-pressure water to remove mold, grime, dust mud and dirt from surfaces and objects such as buildings, vehicles and concrete road surfaces. . At Mesquite, $3,000 worth of equipment was lost from a locked maintenance building. At Tamarisk, vandals started a fire in an outside trash can, but firefighters, called by a school neighbor, extinguished the flames before they reached any building. At Chaparral, two computers and a VCR VCR: see videocassette recorder. VCR in full videocassette recorder Electromechanical device that records, stores on a videotape cassette, and plays back on a TV set recorded images and sound. were stolen by intruders who struck both last weekend and the previous one. At Quail Valley, the vandals broke windows and entered a building but did no other damage. ``I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if they got scared off before they could do anything else or what,'' Barcelona said. Palmdale schools are patrolled by employees of a private security company, Barcelona said, but the security guards check the perimeter of the schools and would not see anyone already inside the grounds. School officials have been discussing ways to prevent future vandalism and burglaries but cannot afford to add staffers, Barcelona said. Sheriff's officials say they have a description of two teens seen leaving Mesquite School over the weekend, but are not sure whether they were offenders. Anyone with information is asked to call the Palmdale sheriff's station at (661) 267-4300 or the Lancaster sheriff's station at (661) 948-8466. |
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