Your heart is racing. Your pulse is so intense that you can feel it thumping. You were robbed, invaded, put in danger. While scenes like this may seem distant, for several students, crime is all too familiar.
Junior Ashley Dennis is one of these students.
“Last year,” Dennis said, “someone broke into our house and stole computers, iPods, TV’s and jewelry.”
Dennis, who says she was instantly shaken by the incident, said she was merely glad that nobody was hurt.
“At first I was really upset,” Dennis said. “There were a lot of priceless things stolen, too, like my autographed posters and some jewelry that meant a lot to me. But after a while I was just thankful that nobody had been home or gotten hurt.”
Junior Anna Grossman, who also experienced a crime, shares the same feelings as Dennis.
“A few years ago somebody thought it would be funny to shoot at my front window,” Grossman said. “I think they could’ve been trying to aim at my cat who usually sits on the ledge. I’m just happy that nobody, including my cat, was injured.”
Both Dennis and Grossman were not present when the crime took place.
“I was at school when it happened, and my mom called me and told me that the house had gotten broken into,” Dennis said.
Grossman recalls a similar account.
“Since no one was home when it happened, it went unseen for a while,” Grossman said. “But I spotted bullet holes when I was looking through the window one day. I remember thinking, what would make someone want to vandalize my house for pure entertainment reasons, and why would someone want to hurt my poor kitty?”
Some students are unlucky enough to witness the crime committed against them, such as junior Gus Martin.
“I was at the school one day when a man must have crawled up to my bike, because there is no other way would’ve gone unnoticed and ran off with my bike,” Martin said. “Once I saw him take off, I chased him, but he smoked me.”
All of these students’ crime experiences were not recent, and none of the students have dealt with such crimes since.
However, Grossman says, it’s hard to recover from being a victim of a crime.
“My window has never been fixed to this day,” Grossman said. “It’s a living reminder of how many cruel people there are in this world.”
Dennis, too, needed time for recuperation.
“I got over it by the end of the week,” Dennis said. “ In the end I was just happy that everyone was safe, and [items] can always be replaced, but it did hurt to lose some of the more personal things.”
However scared the students were, they still feel safe living in Bexley.
“I think it’s a really safe neighborhood, but people can take it for granted,” Dennis said. “I think it’s one of those unfortunate things that happen randomly. My house was locked up, and unfortunately, they broke in, but I know people who leave their car doors and houses unlocked and then are surprised when something happens. Just because it’s a relatively safe place to live, people should still take precautions.”
Martin agrees that preparation and precautions can often prevent certain crimes from happening, but finding out what you need first helps.
“If I would’ve had a bike license, the police would’ve been able to find my bicycle a lot easier,” Martin said. “Even if they had literally found my bike, they still wouldn’t be able to prove it was mine without the license.”
Although Grossman believes that “these types of misdemeanors can never be stopped,” she still feels secure living in Bexley.
“Something like this can happen anywhere,” Grossman said. “I’m just happy that I live in a place where I don’t have to worry about it happening again.”
Published February 2008. Digitized 2025.
