ILLINOIS COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM SCHOOL :: TheSouthern.com - The Southern Illinoisan :::

Vandals strike Anna-Jonesboro High School

BY CALEB HALE
THE SOUTHERN

ANNA — Administrators are tallying thousands of dollars in damaged and stolen property from Anna-Jonesboro Community High School.

Superintendent William Schildknecht said someone broke into the building overnight Tuesday, smashed several windows, including those on the main entrance doors, on school buses and on one of the driver’s education vehicles, and stole four pieces of computer equipment – three LCD monitors, a tower and a printer.

Officials said there was more than one person involved in the vandalism.

The campus is monitored by 48 security cameras, said Principal Jim Woodward, and students know about them.

“We tell our kids at the beginning of the school year about the security cameras,” Woodward said.

For that reason, he said it is unlikely the perpetrators were current or former A-J students.

School officials and officers within the Anna Police Department are currently reviewing security tapes.

Woodward said the school doesn’t have an exact dollar figure for the total damage but said between the broken windows and stolen computers it is surely in the thousands.

School technology coordinator Rex Riepe said he is surprised the vandals didn’t steal more expensive equipment that was in the vicinity. He said in one of the rooms where a computer was stolen also sat a $600 camera.

“They could have taken a bunch of stuff if they wanted,” Riepe said.

If the vandals weren’t students, as administrators suspect, it leaves them wondering why A-J was tar-geted.