LOGAN SQUARE — A vandal smashed windows of nearly every car parked on a Logan Square block sometime early Monday, angering residents already reeling from the coronavirus crisis.
The vandal struck on Bloomingdale Avenue at Spaulding Avenue, right off The 606’s Bloomingdale Trail, sometime early Monday, according to neighbors. At least six car owners reported damaged, Chicago Police spokesman Officer Guadalupe Sanchez said.
Jon O’Rourke, whose 2013 Lexus window was smashed, said he’s “really disappointed in peoples’ selfishness,” which is, “costing their neighbors extra trouble and expenses when we have enough going on right now.”
Money is tight right now for O’Rourke, who works as an Uber driver and a handyman for TaskRabbit. He said he stopped driving for Uber more than a week ago after the coronavirus crisis set in “because it felt irresponsible” and his TaskRabbit jobs have become infrequent.
Monday morning O’Rourke was on his way to a $40 TaskRabbit job, his only job all week, when he noticed someone had smashed one of his car windows.
“It’s tough time for a lot of folks. I gotta imagine whatever numbskull who broke these windows [is] dealing with a similarly tight outlook but it doesn’t seem like a good time to be hurting your neighbors,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke paid $120 plus tip to get the window fixed — “possibly more than a week’s pay unfortunately at this time,” he said.
Many people are either out of a job right now or facing an uncertain future due to the new coronavirus outbreak, which has brought daily life in Chicago to a halt. Officials have shut down schools and all non-essential businesses and ordered everyone to stay at home through at least April 7 to stop the spread of the virus.
Brianne Selino Mareno, a neighbor who lives nearby on Spaulding Avenue, said she talked to one of the car owners who told her he had recently lost his job.
“During this time where we are all suffering they pull an act like this, what jerks,” Mareno said in a message to Block Club.
This isn’t the first time vandals have gone on a car-smashing spree on the block, according to neighbors.
Mareno and O’Rourke’s girlfriend, Becka Treister, said the block has become a hot spot for vandalism in recent years.
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