Thieves Steal the Wheels Right Off Benton Park Cars

A few St. Louisans woke up Wednesday morning in Benton Park to find their cars lifted up on concrete blocks, their wheels and tires both missing.

“Why they didn’t take this side, I don’t know,” says Carl Duney, whose Honda was left with only two wheels. He’s been visiting the neighborhood for almost seven years and never had anything like this happen before.

It is a fairly unusual crime. Thefts from inside vehicles and thefts of catalytic converters out from under cars are relatively common in the region, but it’s rarer for thieves to nab wheels and tires.

Dee Hawkins lives on the block but didn’t have a car hit by the thieves. She’s lived across from Benton Park for 10 years and has never seen anything like it.

“You’re sorry it happened to them,” she says of her neighbors. “But you’re also sorry people felt so desperate they had to do this.”

Hawkins adds that three of the houses on the block have doorbell cameras, but none of them picked up the wheel thefts.

Both Duney and Hawkins say this part of town is generally very safe.

Hawkins says she loves it in the neighborhood. “Where else can you look out and see that?” she says, gesturing towards the pond in Benton Park, a family of ducks gliding across the water.

She adds that sometimes she does pick up “used prophylactics” along the sidewalk adjacent to the park. She shrugs as if to say that if people feel safe enough to have sex there in the middle of the night they should feel safe to do just about anything else.

Except, perhaps, once in a blue moon, park their cars.

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