A Michigan couple vacationing in Portland had their cars broken into twice in less than a week.
Adrian Hammerle and Eleora Gouine of Grand Rapids were aware of the crime issues in Portland but wrote it off as something all cities were going through.
“Yeah, I mean, Adrian was talking it up. He was so excited to bring me. I was so excited to go, and I mean we’ve had some people be like, oh, yeah, there’s a lot of homeless over there, so just be careful. And I was just like, oh yeah, we’ll be fine. I’m not too worried,” Eleora told KATU.
The day after they arrived at their hotel downtown, they went to their car to grab coffee.
“And when we got to the car, I looked down at the ground and I saw that there was a bunch of glass, and I was like, oh, weird. OK, and I went to go open the door and saw that the window was smashed to pieces. And at that moment, I was like, oh my, someone just broke into our car, and I was looking around the car to see what was stolen,” said Eleora.
The thieves took a Nintendo Switch but left their camping gear.
They’d heard about Portland’s crime issues but understood it’s something all big cities are going through.
This understanding changed after their windows were broken out and all their belongings were stolen two different times in a matter of days.https://t.co/JFSyKvKaAQ
— KATU News (@KATUNews) October 6, 2023
The couple moved the car to the top floor of another garage, thinking that would keep it safe.
A few days later, it happened again. This time, the criminal broke every window — except the windshield.
“So as I’m coming from the elevator and walking through the door and whatnot, I noticed the film that we put over to cover the broken window, initially, was cut through, and then as I was walking around the vehicle, just about every single window was shattered besides the windshield and our stuff that was in the vehicle, from her coloring books and stuff like that and pens, that are all just scattered all over the place and just about everything that we had in the vehicle, which is a little more than we had the first time we were broken into, because we’re about to leave. Just about everything was stolen,” said Adrian.
The couple went to a parking attendant for help, but he laughed at them.
“Yeah, he laughed in my face and said, ‘This happens all the time.’ I was like, that does not make me feel very good at all about the situation,” Eleora said.
“A 30-hour drive home with no windows. And at night it got really cold, and during the day it got hot in most of the states on our way home,” said Eleora. “So we just weren’t comfortable at all. I had to put on some clothes that we had from the hotels. I had to put those on the seat so that, you know, we weren’t sitting on glass on accident. I did end up having a piece of glass in my foot the entire 30-hour drive home.”
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office told KATU, “This is an incredibly disheartening and frustrating situation.”
They also pointed to steps being taken to make the city safer. The report says that the City Council has approved a “$6 million contract for improved private security in parking garages, including 24-hour security for Portland’s five downtown city parking garages. They also point to a recent public-private collaboration to fund additional security officers specifically to patrol the hotel district seven days a week.”
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