Vandals strike in Old Town Tehachapi
Sometime Thursday night or early Friday, vandals broke into Sequoia Physical Therapy and the Tehachapi Martial Arts Center next door in a strip mall in Old Town Tehachapi.
Martial Arts owners Ivan and Maria Jadric arrived to find their business ransacked and a TV missing. Trophies were tossed to the floor and broken. Photos were ripped off the walls. Papers and furniture were tossed around the office. It appears vandals entered by breaking a window fronting Highway 202. Apparently in the process, a vandal or vandals injured themselves as blood drops were found along with a towel with blood on it in the restroom.
Next door at Sequoia Physical Therapy, vandals broke a rear window and tossed items about, but were apparently unsuccessful in gaining access to any patient information. Potted plants outside the Healthy Hippie Trading Company were broken and tossed but apparently the business was not entered. It was reported that an overhead security camera captured images of the vandals destroying the potted plants.
The owners of the businesses that were broken into tried to reach county law enforcement officers, but when they called to report the crime and get assistance, all they heard was a recorded message directing them to go to the Kern County Sheriff’s Office website to file a report.
People from both businesses drove to the nearby Kern County Sheriff’s Tehachapi substation around 7 a.m. Friday and found only a locked door and an
emergency phone in a box by the front door.
Wendy Ozenne from Sequoia Physical Therapy tried the phone, but got no dial tone. The business owners called the Mojave Sheriff’s substation and were told to fill out an online form reporting the crime. As of 9:15 a.m. Friday and even after returning to the Tehachapi substation a second time, they still found no one at the building and the phone still not working. By 9:30 a.m. Friday, law enforcement officials had not yet responded to see the damage.