Meredith Censullo - Bradenton Police Looking for Tesla Vandal Suspect

Bradenton police are looking for a man in connection with an incident in which three Teslas were vandalized in the parking lot of the Pinebrook Commons shopping center. Detectives think he was driving a dark Chevy crossover or SUV. We get more information from police spokesperson Meredith Censullo. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. We're speaking with
Meredith Sensulo, spokesperson for the Bradenton Police Department, about an
incident involving vandalism apparently directed at some Tesla vehicles.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Meredith and Soulo, welcome, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
What are you able to say? What are police able
to say right now about this incident as far as
where and when it happened and how many vehicles were targeted.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
So there was a total of three Tesla vehicles that
all received damage at around the same time. And this
occurred the evening of Tuesday, March eleventh, sometime between approximately
six and eight pm, and so all three of these
Teslas were parked at the Pinebrook Common shopping plaza here

(00:53):
in Bradenton. Two of the Tesla owners were actually in
one of the restaurants in that plaza having dinner, and
then the third Tesla owner was doing some shopping in
that plaza, and so they all returned to their cars
around the same time and noticed that their cars had
significant scratches down the sides of their vehicles. So, you know,

(01:18):
it's a busy shopping plaza on a Tuesday evening, but
these were the only vehicles that appeared to be damaged.
So what BPD was able to put out yesterday evening
is essentially our effort to see if anyone recognizes the
person who we've identified as the suspect. We did get

(01:39):
a little bit of video from one of the cameras
onboard one of the teslas that appears to show a
person scratching the side of one of those vehicles, and
we were also able to obtain some security camera video
of the vehicle that we believe that suspect was driving.
And so our hope is that the little bit of

(02:02):
video that we do have of the suspect, as well
as the pictures of his vehicle, maybe someone will recognize
this person and reach out to us.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Now, when people here scratching down the side, the image
that comes to mind is something like keying. But it
sounds like this is something that is not easily handled
with a little bit of touch up paint. It sounds
like the damage is a little more severe. Do you
have a quantification on that to any kind of a
monetary figure.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
So the vehicle owners provided some initial estimates to us.
Two of the vehicles had about three thousand dollars worth
of damage, and there was one thousand dollars worth of
damage to the third car. Those totals could change, but
those were those preliminary estimates to the vehicles because they
were significant scratches. It was significant damage that was done

(02:58):
to these cars. And so right now we're looking at
about seven thousand dollars which would make this felony criminal
mischief and.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
That that would be a felony. Now the the UH also,
are you also taking tips through crime Stoppers.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
We will always welcome tips through crime Stoppers for any case,
and you don't have to be reporting information about a
crime that we put out. If you have information on
any crime, we will always encourage people to utilize crime Stoppers.
That's what it's there for, and it certainly helps our

(03:37):
detectives if people don't want to reach out to us directly,
So we will absolutely encourage people to utilize crime Stoppers.
It is an anonymous service. Whether or not there's a
reward in this case, I mean, that would be up
to Crime Stoppers, but certainly we would welcome any information
that comes to us through through crime Stoppers, and anybody

(04:00):
else who has similar incidents that have occurred to them,
we would certainly want to know about that as well.
At this point, we're just aware of those three vehicles
at that one plaza. But you know, we know right
now that this is sort of a hot button topic
and and you know there may be others who have
sustained similar damage. From our point of view, this is

(04:26):
a black and white investigation, so we're not taking into account,
you know, whether this is a hot button topic or not.
At the end of the day, these were three folks
who had their cars damage for no apparent reason other
than this person just wanted to inflict damage to their cars.

(04:46):
So from our point of view, that's not okay. We
would treat this the same way we would if you know,
this person had damage a Mini Cooper or a Ford
f one point fifty. We just were not going to
tolerate people damaging another person's property in our jurisdiction.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Meredith sen Soulo, spokesperson Bradenton Police Department, Thank you very
much for joining us on Beyond the News.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Thank you so much.