CHICAGO — Something stinks in Bridgeport.
A masked man is smearing poop on Bridgeport homes and cars — and sometimes hiding it under car door handles so the victims can’t see it. It’s happened a least a dozen times in recent weeks, with one person even catching the vandal on video as he rubbed poop — either human or dog; no one’s sure — on her car late in May.
Tony Wu, 21, of Bridgeport, said he almost fell for the foul trick last week: He went to his car and was about to open the door when he spotted feces under the handle.
“I really didn’t want it to be poop, but you know it is,” Wu said.
Late to work, Wu managed to get into the car and then rushed through a carwash to clean up the poop.
Afterward, Wu talked to neighbors and posted to a neighborhood watch Facebook group, curious to see if anyone else had experienced anything similar. The comments poured in: It turns out there have been about 15 such incidents in the neighborhood over the last month and a half based on reports Wu’s gotten from other Bridgeport residents.
One family said their new house had been targeted repeatedly, with the vandal wiping feces on the door a least three times, Wu said.
“I wasn’t really upset because it really wasn’t something large, but, at the same time, it’s petty in a sense,” Wu said. “I just really didn’t want him to keep doing this over and over again and to keep getting away with it.”
At least one of the incidents was reported to Chicago Police: On May 25, a woman filed a report saying someone spread feces on her car and broke the driver’s side mirror while the car was parked near her home at 30th Street and Emerald Avenue, according to a department spokeswoman.
Detectives are investigating but have no new leads or information, the police spokeswoman said. The woman’s security cameras recorded video of the man vandalizing her car.
The video, given to Block Club Chicago by Wu, shows a man carrying a duffel bag as he walks up to a car and rubs a towel along the side of the car. He calmly walks away afterward.
Watch the video here:
The culprit hits early in the morning, wandering the neighborhood 3-5 a.m. with a duffel bag “full of paper towels and what I assume to be dog feces or maybe his own; I’m not sure,” Wu said. The man passes the homes and cars he’s going to mark several times.
“And he’s just smearing it on people’s front doors, their cars, and he’s leaving it under their door handles,” Wu said.
The person appears to be a 30- to 40-year-old man who is balding and wears glasses. He typically wears a mask, Wu said.
Hoping to find patterns and aid the investigation, Wu and a friend hand-drew a map of the known incidents.
So far, they’ve had little luck finding clues: The man appeared to be striking (or, rather, smearing) every two days or so, but the spots he vandalizes are more spaced out than Wu had originally thought. And the vandal has apparently stopped since Wu posted to the neighborhood watch group, which has left Wu worried the man is part of the group and is monitoring the posts.
The only clear connection the two have found so far is most, if not all, of the victims are Asian, though Wu said he thinks the targets are “just very random,” Wu said.
Wu’s not even sure where the man is getting the feces he uses.
“There’s no way he just has feces laying around to smear on people’s cars,” Wu said. “He has to be collecting it somehow.”
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