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Mailbox vandalism triggers offer of a reward

As New Year's fireworks exploded, vandals reduced more than a dozen wooden mailboxes in the neighborhood to rubble.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published January 12, 2007

He has served several deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, studying the enemy and thinking up military maneuvers.

But here in his own back yard, a quiet neighborhood of manicured lawns and screened lanais, Michael Hobaugh wants to catch his own form of insurgents.

Hobaugh, a 42-year-old lieutenant commander in the Navy, awoke New Year's morning to find his mailbox in pieces. Down his street, fragments of many of his neighbors' wooden mailboxes also littered their lawns. Hobaugh was incensed.

Hobaugh, a first-time homeowner, is offering a $500 reward leading to the arrest of the mailbox vandals. He knows they're only mailboxes, but just like the splintered pieces of wood, the act has shattered the peace of this quiet neighborhood.

"It's just not their property," he said. "You wonder what will happen next time?"

The mailboxes along this stretch of Cypress Shadow Avenue are not your ordinary upside down U-shaped metal letter holders. They have roofs made of wood nailed together to form an inverted V, much like the kind schoolchildren create out of Popsicle sticks.

Sometime during the night, as New Year's Eve partiers launched fireworks and lit firecrackers, someone destroyed the mailboxes - more than a dozen of them. No one heard anything, Hobaugh said, because the sound of explosives punctured the night like rapid gunfire. Some mailboxes, like the one belonging to Hobaugh's next-door neighbor, were so badly damaged, they will require replacements. Others, like Hobaugh's, can be salvaged.

"I spent New Year's Day screwing my mailbox back together," he said. "That was not how I had planned to spend it."

Hillsborough County sheriffs officials told Hobaugh that the vandals will be hard to catch because there do not appear to be any witnesses.

But Hobaugh is holding out hope that the reward money will entice someone to come forward.

After all, some might consider it a petty crime, but to him, the act was much more than that.

"It was just senseless to me," he said. "They have no regard for other people's property. It was sneaky and cowardice, very much like how the insurgents operate."

Dong-Phuong Nguyen can be reached at nguyen@sptimes.com or 813 269-5312.

[Last modified January 11, 2007, 11:59:22]