EAST THETFORD — Patrick Perry was driving to his home on Latham Road in Thetford one Saturday last month when he heard a couple of loud bangs close together.
At first, he thought it was a rock that hit his car around 7:15 p.m. on Sept. 27, around a mile from his home. When he pulled into his driveway, he looked and saw that two gunshots had hit the passenger side of his vehicle.
“That wasn’t on my radar until I looked at it and I could tell immediately it was a pellet gun,” Perry said in a phone interview last week. “Around that area, the whole door got sucked in and dented by the force of that pellet.”
The location of the shots unnerved him too: His wife was in the passenger seat of his vehicle and if the pellets had hit the window instead of the door, it could have been more serious, he said.
“If it had been a couple feet higher it could have been a really bad situation,” he said.
He contacted Vermont State Police, who recommended he contact the Thetford Police Department, which he said is investigating the incident.
“More than anything I wanted to be sure they were aware of my account in case they’d seen something like this somewhere else; this became part of a trend,” Perry said.
Thetford Police Chief Michael Scruggs said in a Thursday morning email that the incident is being investigated by Sgt. Karie Tucker, who is “currently out of town at training.”
But there are indications that Perry’s vehicle was not the only one in the area to be targeted.
Scruggs said his department received a subsequent report from another caller about damage to a vehicle window on Sept. 29.
After reporting his own experience, Perry said he became aware of an incident on Sept. 30 in Bradford, Vt., where a gunshot shattered the sunroof of a vehicle driven by a Corinth woman, according to a news release from Vermont State Police.
As of last Friday, that investigation remains active, Vermont State Police spokesman Adam Silverman wrote in an email.
Those with information regarding the Bradford incident are encouraged to call Vermont State Police’s St. Johnsbury Barracks at 802-748-3111.
Silverman did not respond to requests for comment this week about the status of the Bradford investigation, or Perry’s case in Thetford.
As of Wednesday of this week, Perry still had not heard back from Vermont State Police. He also followed up with the Thetford Police Department to tell them about a suspicious vehicle he saw shortly after he said his vehicle was shot at.
“I cannot understand what feels like a lack of concern from the police,” Perry wrote in a Wednesday email.
Thetford’s police department is not a 24-hour agency. It is currently staffed by Scruggs and Tucker and is short one full-time officer. Vermont State Police provide dispatch services and coverage when the department’s officers are off duty.
Scruggs said he was away when a call came in about damage to the side of a vehicle on Latham Road.
The day the second call came in was a busy day, Scruggs said, as the department was also responding to a report of a missing person and an aggravated assault.
“These took my focus for most of the week,” he wrote.
Scruggs urged residents to “make timely reports of incidents,” such reports can help guide the department in its use of resources such as altering patrols.
“It is well known staffing is short and we need to make efficient use of time,” he wrote.
For Perry, the situation seems serious enough to warrant further investigation.
“The big thing I think for me is there’s a public safety part of it,” Perry said. “It’s one thing if there’s an unoccupied vehicle and kids shoot at them. It’s wrong, but it doesn’t rise to the same levels of concern. When you’re shooting high-velocity pellet rounds at moving vehicles, it can cause an accident.”
