Kahakai Elementary School was the target of a malicious break-in this past week with a perpetrator vandalizing the office of the physical education teacher.
PE teacher Janet Hunter returned to work last Monday to find her office ransacked. She said she walked in that morning and first noticed snacks wrappers strewn about the room.
“At first I was thinking, wow, this is one big rat,” she recalled. “Then I turned and I saw all of my cabinets open. All my drawers open. My papers were everywhere. I said I’m sure a rat can’t read, so something is going on.”
She also noticed a horrific smell and discovered someone had defecated in her trash can.
Hunter said the items missing were random. A ball pump, snacks, computer cords, silverware and tools were among the missing items.
Other more expensive items remained untouched, including PE equipment, boxes of T-shirts and dye for their color run event.
“I went around the corner of my building, and see all of my papers around a bench,” she said.
She asked the garden keeper if he was missing anything and he replied all of the tomatoes in the garden had been picked.
She also noticed a pillow she had in her office, trail mix and spices were strewn about a rock on the road leading into the school.
The police were called, but she said those responding officers did not offer any encouragement that the case would be followed up.
Hunter also observed a fence that was cut, giving access to the school.
“It looked like they were camped out there all of Friday night,” she said. “We know people were coming and going on campus Saturday and Sunday, and nothing was seen or heard, so I figure it happened Friday night.”
Hunter surmised the perpetrator was a vagrant.
The teacher said she makes daily morning sweeps of the perimeter of the field where she holds classes, often having to pick up trash, drug paraphernalia and needles before the children descend upon the play area. She said there has been a problem with homeless individuals in adjacent areas of the school, once finding the school’s hose extended to a tent on the other side of the fence.
“How do we know that these people aren’t registered sex offenders, living on the other side of the fence?” she questioned.
Email Laura Ruminski at lruminski@westhawaiitoday.com.