In this photo, three cars that were on fire in front of a Carriage House apartment are pictured. The silver Honda (middle) was originally set on fire, and the fire spread to the cars on the left and right. (Courtesy)
Stephanie Koldras did not expect her car to catch fire when she left campus this weekend.
Koldras, a 7th-semester speech pathology major, is the owner of one of three cars that was burned early Sunday Morning at Carriage apartment five. She wasn’t even home for the incident, according to her roommate, Taylor Bomley.
“I was sleeping, and then my roommate came and woke me up, and she goes ‘Steph’s car is on fire,’” Bomley, a 7th-semester nursing major said. “She’s [Koldras is] very upset and she said she doesn’t feel comfortable living here,” Bomley said of Koldras.
Emily Roth, a 7th-semester political science major and resident of Carriage 5B, was also present that evening.
“Last night, they [5A] were having a party, and these two kids were there, and they wouldn’t leave, and I guess there was an altercation, and they [the police] think it was those two kids,” Roth said. “It might’ve been them, but they’re [the police are] not sure. At like 5:30 [A.M.], [apartment 5] A’s friends who were sleeping in the living room woke up to the door on fire, and it had been doused in gasoline. They put that out, and the car in one of [apartment 5] A’s parking spots was on fire – the middle one – and the two cars on either side were also totaled.”
Bomley said that when she first looked outside, the middle, silver car was “enflamed.” The fire soon spread to the two adjacent cars.
Residents of 5A did not want to be named, but did say they had “no idea” who the perpetrator of the crime was, and that “it could be anyone that lives on campus.”
Mansfield police officers and firefighters at the scene that afternoon did not want to comment, on an ongoing criminal investigation.
According to Roth, police said because apartment 5A’s door was deliberately soaked in gasoline (as was the middle, silver car) and at least 15 people were in the apartment at the time, the committers of the crime could be tried for attempted murder.
Carriage has also seen multiple dumpster fires since the academic year began.
Sten Spinella is a senior staff writer for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at sten.spinella@uconn.edu. He tweets @SSpinella927.
