NEBRASKA COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM SCHOOLWOWT | Laptops Stolen From School: "Laptops Stolen From School
Laptops Stolen From School
Two break-ins investigated


A Papillion elementary school has been hit twice by burglars and the thieves made off with some key learning tools both times.
The crooks got in through a front classroom window at Carriage Hill Elementary last weekend. The weekend before, it was the same type of break-in through a different window.
As the district has now learned, a one-handle lock on the inside is not enough to keep thieves out.
Papillion-La Vista's maintenance supervisor, Dave Harrill says, 'If somebody's going to break in, they're going to break in.'
The windows at Carriage Hill open out, for fire code reasons. That makes building access easy, once the lock is broken.
Harrill says he never gave a second thought about thieves breaking in but now that five laptops have been stolen the school is improving its security by adding reinforcement locks to each window.
That will hopefully prevent future break-ins but it doesn't solve the immediate problem of the students being down to only a few mobile computers for the whole school to share.
Teachers use the laptops throughout the day.
Fourth grade teacher John Burbach says, 'Say something came up in science that students had questions about, that they wanted to find out a little bit of information. It gave me the opportunity to go down, check out the mobile lab and bring it back.'
Fourth grader Austin Severson says, 'They're really cool and we get to do a lot of projects on them.'
Austin and his classmates are especially frustrated. The kids helped raise money to buy the laptops.
The district is working to replace the stolen laptops.
The computers all had identifying stickers but those can be removed.
Police tell us they did recover some evidence from the break-in but no arrests have been made in the case."