VALRICO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Deputies arrested a suspect accused of deliberating spreading nails on the roads, causing a lot of flat tires.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Deputies arrested a suspect accused of deliberating spreading nails on the roads, causing a lot of flat tires
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Residents say that Miller Road and other surrounding streets had nails beginning in October
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Police are asking anyone who had a flat tire due to nails in the area to file a report<\/p>\n
Residents say Miller Road was one of the main targets. Beginning in October, this road has been littered with nails, and now, knowing someone did this intentionally, they\u2019re left wondering why.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is the tire it got,\u201d said Heather Johnson. She was one of the \u201cNail Bandit\u2019s\u201d most recent victims, and after avoiding Miller Road for the last few months, she says that on Monday night, she had a flat tire.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Monday night I had to take this road, and I got hit, I got hit by the nail bandit and my tire had a nail in it so when I got home it was leaking air everywhere and I had to drive to the tire shop and $350 later, I had to replace the tire. This has been going on for months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Catching the Nail Bandit became a community-wide goal after people started posting about having nails in their tires after driving on Miller Road, Durant and nearby streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cResidents have been posting pictures about collecting nails all over, and they\u2019ve had their Ring doorbell cameras trying to capture who\u2019s doing this and if they\u2019re falling off of a truck. It\u2019s supposedly roofing nails,\u201d said Johnson.<\/p>\n
Sandy Townsend saw those same social media posts and she wanted to help her neighbors, so she created the \u201cHave You Been Nailed\u201d Facebook group to help collect data, which she took straight to Hillsborough County deputies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to figure out who is doing this, why they\u2019re doing it, they\u2019re posting pictures of their tires with nails, they\u2019re posting pictures of nails they\u2019ve found on the street,\u201d said Townsend.<\/p>\n
The group has grown to nearly 800 members, and Townsend says now that an arrest has been made, she hopes things get back to normal, and her neighbors can safely drive around without fear of getting a flat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI encourage people to if they have any nail damage to go to the sheriff\u2019s office on Falkenburg Road and file a report in person, and that\u2019s the best way to help right now and make sure justice is served,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
HCSO believes there could be a lot of victims out there who haven\u2019t filed a report yet, so they\u2019re also encouraging anyone who had a nail, or nails, in their tires after driving through Valrico to file a report as soon as possible. At this time, they say it is still an active investigation, so they haven\u2019t identified the suspect or said any possible motives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VALRICO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Deputies arrested a suspect accused of deliberating spreading nails on the roads, causing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2967,265,4995,5711,115,277,135,137,136,6390,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-120383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-app-public-safety","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-crime-safety","11":"tag-fallon-silcox","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-public-safety","14":"tag-tampa","15":"tag-tampa-headlines","16":"tag-tampa-news","17":"tag-topic-latest-public-safety-crime-stories","18":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}