Arrest after bus shelters shot at
MORE than 200 Wellington bus shelters have been vandalised in a series of driveby shooting sprees over the past month.
Glass panels at 210 shelters around the city were shattered between January 1 and February 3, by what police suspect was someone driving past and shooting at them with a BB gun.
Adshel New Zealand, which owns the advertising panels in bus shelters, said it typically averaged about eight breakages a month throughout the Wellington region, but had had to replace 236 panels in the past month, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars.
City bus passengers had been noticing the widespread extent of the damage. One comment on popular social media and news forum Reddit asked: ‘‘What’s up with the broken glass in bus shelters?
‘‘I’ve noticed a lot of bus shelters recently with smashed glass panels. Noticed it in Newtown/Berhampore, the city, out at Kaiwharawhara and everywhere in between.’’
Another said: ‘‘There’s ones out to the airport busted as well, it’s all over the place.’’
The first commenter responded: ‘‘What’s weird is how suddenly it’s happened, and how widespread, almost like it’s co-ordinated.’’
New Zealand Bus southern chief operations officer Tonia Haskell said the city’s bus drivers had been dismayed by the vandalism, and had been fielding complaints from their passengers about the shattered glass.
‘‘Our drivers were concerned about our passengers not being able to sit down. It will be good to see an end to this, that’s for sure,’’ Haskell said.
Adshel NZ general manager Nick Vile said: ‘‘This has been a frustrating situation for us. We are still working through final costs and, although this information is commercially sensitive, I can indicate that it is tens of thousands . . .’’
Costs to the company would include replacing the glass panels, materials, labour, overtime, and shipping costs to get the extra glass to Wellington, he said.
Adshel could not get insurance against glass breakage, because of the high risk of routine vandalism and other damage. It was a ‘‘cost that we unfortunately must bear’’, he said.
Police arrested a Kilbirnie man on Monday night, on suspicion of driving past bus shelters and shooting out the glass with a gas-powered BB pistol from a white van.
Johnny Dang, 29, is charged with wilfully damaging at least four shelters, and officers were investigating whether he was responsible for damage to the rest, Wellington police spokesman Nick Bohm said.
Dang appeared in Wellington District Court on Tuesday and was remanded on bail to reappear next month.
Bohm said Dang offered no explanation for the alleged offending during police questioning.