SANDY, Utah — Police said in the past week, several people reported severe tire damage from a homemade deflation device placed on the road.
These devices, made of cardboard with nails protruding through black duct tape have been found around neighborhoods.
"There's vandalism, we've had two of our cars get nails in the tires,” said Renee Christensen. "I was surprised that the neighbor two houses down the street had the same experience.”
Jared Kinder had a flat tire over the weekend. "I had heard about it, I thought, oh doesn’t happen to me,” he said. “Until I drive away and then, thup, thup, thup, I had to pull over and check and sure enough.”
On Sunday morning, Kinder found a piece of cardboard with five nails on it, lodged into the tire. He said that when he went to the tire shop, they couldn’t patch the leak because there were too many nails too close to each other.
"They do blend in quite well with the road and so it’s very hard for people to see them,” explained Sgt. Aymee Race with Unified Police Department.
White City sent a community notice out telling people that the device have been damaging tires and reminding them to be careful.
The notice also advises people to report any cases to police and to check security cameras to see if they caught anything that could help with the investigation.
Police still don’t know who is behind the device and what their motive is.
"We sent one of our own officers to investigate and they located several devices in this area in White City, which is around the Violet Street area, and so we just currently have detectives out, trying to locate this individual,” added Sgt. Race.
Kinder said actions like these can lead to "safety issues, distrust, the time it takes just to get tires mounted, the unexpected scheduling disruption."
Hoping to find the person making and leaving these so things can go back to normal soon.
"I do look at my tires more than I did before,” said Christensen.
Anyone with information is asked to contact UPD at the non-emergency line: 801-840-4000
