What to Know
- Police in Vernon, New Jersey, say someone's laying out homemade tire-gashing devices on roads
- They've mainly been recovered from entrances to farms
- Around 20 devices have been collected so far
Someone is scattering homemade tire-gashing devices on streets in a New Jersey township, and police are looking for the culprit.
Police in Vernon have recovered 20 devices with several different designs -- but they all are being placed on the ground in a way to puncture and slash car tires.
"One style device really looks like a razor blade, like two razor blades together," said Vernon Police Chief Daniel Young. "They're obviously homemade, they're taking a lot of time to put them together. The other one is a little archaic, kind of like an oversized piece of barb wire."
Young said there's a common target: "We've been finding them mostly at the entrance to farms."
Most of the time, it's dark out when victims drive over the piercing devices, so they have no idea what they've encountered.
Leon Yorke, who runs a local tire and auto shop, said it's the season for flats from potholes but these incidents are entirely new.
Local
The objects are turning up all over the area, and even across the state line in Warwick, New York. Young said the department has a few leads, and New Jersey state police collected some of the devices and have them in the state crime lab for forensic testing.
