Former SIU Pike house vandalized (4 times)

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Former SIU Pike house vandalized
By CJ Cassidy

CARBONDALE, IL --Shattered windows, soggy floors and spray painted grafitti add up to tens of thousands of dollars in property damage at a former Southern Illinois fraternity home.Investigators call the acts of vandalism unusual, because it happened several times at the same building.

The building housed the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity before SIU campus leaders banned the group, after the drowning death of one of its pledges.Now police want to know who left behind the mess of broken glass and grafitti. "Since April we've had four different reports of damage at the house," Sgt. Don Priddy with the Carbondale Police Department says.

Priddy says the first incident happened April 17th. Three days later SIU administrators banned the Pikes from campus, for violating school policy during the camping trip that ended in the drowning death of 19-year-old Brent Johnson. Since then investigators say the house has been vandalized three times adding up to more than $100,000 in damage."There was damage to the walls, broken windows, flooding from faucets that were left on; that's the bulk of what's been reported to us," Priddy explained.

There are several crude remarks spray painted on the walls and pavement outside the old pike building aimed at the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity but an attorney who spoke on behalf of the owner of the building wouldn't confirm if the ATO's were going to occupy the building next semester."The amounts of the damage is very serious it's felony amounts of damage done," Priddy says.

And now some students wonder if the Pikes themselves had something to do with the vandalism."I think they should take responsibility for what they did. I think it's pretty childish, how they're behaving, and they probably deserved what they got," Greg Facteau said.

The attorney Heartland News spoke with, says the owner also has other properties he's leased out; but this is the only one that was damaged. He thinks it could take quite a while before the building is repaired and cleaned up.