Published: October 15, 2009 11:09 pm         

Mailbox explosions have residents on edge

‘A bad prank’ being investigated by Vigo Sheriff, U.S. Postal inspectors

TERRE HAUTE — Beth Buechler heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot sometime after 11 p.m. Tuesday in front of her northern Vigo County home.

Her husband, Jim, went outside to check but didn’t initially find anything.

The next morning, her husband found the heavy, steel mailbox “blown to bits” in the road, she said. The Buechlers had paid between $150 to $200 for it.

“It’s scary,” she said Thursday. She worries about all the people who might have opened the mailbox and been hurt — the postman, her husband, herself, her grandchildren.

It may have been a prank, but it wasn’t funny. “I don’t think they understand how dangerous this is,” she said. And maybe they don’t realize they can also hurt themselves.

Postal officials and the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department are investigating that and two other reports of explosive devices destroying or damaging mailboxes in the North Terre Haute area. Two were on Rosehill Avenue and a third was on Trout Road.

No one was hurt in the explosions, which occurred late Tuesday or early Wednesday. It does not appear the residents were targeted by those who placed the explosive devices in the mailboxes, said Jake Compton, chief deputy with the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department.

The explosive devices were made out of aerosol cans, he said. “We’re still trying to determine how they were detonated.”

One of the devices blew a hole in the bottom of a mailbox that was enclosed in brick.

“It’s a bad prank if that’s what it is,” Compton said. “Someone could have been hospitalized or injured severely if this thing would have blown up in their face.”

Authorities don’t have any suspects at this point, he said. The investigation is continuing.

The Buechlers have replaced their expensive and now destroyed mailbox with one that is $10.

A postal inspector from Indianapolis has already been to their home, Beth Buechler said.

It appears the culprits used a spray paint can that had electrical tape on it. When her husband found it, the can was “as flat as a pancake,” she said.

The explosion left white paint in a ditch in front of their house.

She believes the incident was random.



Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@tribstar.com