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4 teens arrested for shooting up to 100 vehicles with BB guns

Posted at 11:48 AM, Jul 16, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-16 11:51:40-04

WYOMING, Mich. — Wyoming police are investigating up to 100 vehicles shot with BB guns during the past two nights.

Four teenagers have been arrested for the crimes.

According to Lt. Mark Easterly, over the past two nights the Wyoming Police Department had been receiving reports of individuals in a red car shooting vehicles with BB guns. Three 16-year-old boys and one 14-year-old boy, all of them from Wyoming, were eventually arrested at 4:15 a.m. Saturday.

Police also recovered several BB guns.

The four are being held in juvenile detention on charges of malicious destruction of property. One of them — the car's driver — also faces a charge of fleeing and eluding.

Most of the cars hit were located north of 28th Street between Clyde Park and Burlingame, with some others between those two streets south to 36th or 40th streets.

“We looked and there was glass everywhere," said Izalia Amaya, whose father's car window was shot. "The whole window was gone."

Amaya's father said he heard noises but didn't think much of it at the time.

“The next thing you know, about a half hour later, I go inside the house and a neighbor comes knocking on the door and says hey your window’s smashed," Edison Amaya, said. "I thought he was joking around, but I walked outside and saw a lot of glass all over the place,"

The Amaya family isn't alone. They're one of nearly 100 reports of windows being shot with BB guns. FOX 17 found multiple businesses were also targeted.

"They just completely ruined the front of our story," said Coleman Baar, owner of Café Aromas in Grand Rapids.

"There's really nothing that these kids are going to be able to do to make us whole again. This is not the normal cost of doing business, so we're just hoping we can weather the storm."

No one was injured but residents across Kent County still spent their morning cleaning up shattered glass.

"What fun do you get out of that smashing other people’s windows and not seeing what they’re going through when they wake up in the morning," Edison Amaya asked. "That’s the hard part right there, that’s what should make kids think. How are you going to feel the next day after what you did?”

Police are asking Wyoming residents to check their vehicles and property to make sure they don't have damage from BB guns. Anyone finding BB gun damage should call the Wyoming Police Department at (616) 530-7300.

FOX 17's Rebecca Russell contributed to this report.