JANUARY 23, 2025 VOLUME 118 ISSUE 6
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INKED O N CA M P U S MADELEINE MCCOLL MANAGING EDITOR
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MADELEINE MCCOLL GAZETTE
Student homes see spike in break-ins over winter break MABEL ZHAO NEWS EDITOR
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aura Tamburro realized something was wrong when she opened her bedroom door and saw her window wide open. “There were leaves all over my bed and on the floor and my closet and drawers were open,” said Tamburro. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not how I left it.’” The second-year English and creative writing student had returned to her off-campus house the weekend before classes were scheduled to resume after winter break — she had been gone for about two weeks. “The first thing I did was run to my drawer because all my cash was in there,” said Tamburro. “All of it was gone.”
Tamburro had left a substantial amount of money — savings from her summer job meant to cover her living expenses — tucked away in her drawer. “And then I screamed, ‘Guys we got robbed!’” Two of Tamburro’s housemates had returned from winter break before her and, other than the place being a little messy, neither noticed anything concerning. But after a quick search of the house, they found more cash missing and wood on the floor in one of the bedrooms from when the door was kicked in. One of Tamburro’s roommates called the police while she called her landlord. “My landlord was freaking out because it’s never happened before,” she said. “It was really scary.” Ciara Chisholm, a second-year King’s University College psychology student whose house also
got broken into over winter break, echoed Tamburro’s statements. “We were just shocked,” she said. “You never think that it’s going to happen to you.” Chisholm found out her home had been broken into when she came back to London on Dec. 31 for New Year’s celebrations. Chisholm said that she discovered her bedroom door open and cracked and, while her room looked fairly undisturbed, her roommates’ bedrooms were in disarray. She added the police identified the perpetrator’s point of entry as a window above the sink in the kitchen, where the forensics team also dusted for fingerprints. “The constable sat on the couch with us and explained that it’s been happening to lots of people,” Chisholm said.
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“It was a good experience with the cops and they were really, really helpful,” she added. London Police Service’s media officer constable Matthew Dawson said that while there isn’t a single reason student houses are more vulnerable to break-ins, unoccupied-looking residences are frequently targeted. The LexisNexis Community Crime Map shows a cluster of residential burglaries in the past month around Oxford Street and Wharncliffe Road, a popular student neighbourhood. Tamburro said she was so disturbed by the break-in that she has spent several nights in one of her roommate’s rooms. “For a couple days, I just couldn’t even be in my room because I’d immediately start crying or just get so scared,” she said.
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