Laptops of Andover Students Stolen

Laptops belonging to Andover and Hillside School students were stolen at the Love Gym during their Squash and Hockey games against Exeter on Wednesday, Feb. 5. The thefts occurred between 2 pm and 9 pm in the visiting teams’ locker rooms, and to date, no culprit has been found. An investigation is underway by the Exeter Police Department.

Five laptops were taken from Andover and two from Hillside teams. Each laptop stolen was either a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, and prices ranged from $800 to $1200. The purchase value was around $1000 per laptop. Currently, campus safety is following up on insurance policies to cover the loss. 

Campus Safety Officer Andrew Pixely launched the investigation. “I've been here for five and a half years. I can't remember anything like this here ever happening in my time here,” Pixley said.

On Feb. 5, Andover and Hillside played games with a 45-minute time difference; the teams were assigned side-by-side locker rooms, G and C in the Love Gym complex. The locker room doors were left unlocked and it is likely the culprit entered the locker room and took the computers.  

Campus Safety was initially contacted by Andover after the game, and the Deans’ Office reached out to Hillside to determine if there were more thefts. Afterward, Campus Safety looked at the camera footage in the lobby area of the gym but was unable to determine a culprit. 

“It is really hard to determine who belongs in the facility and who doesn't since everybody goes in with a hockey bag, backpack, or some type of bag. It would be easy enough for someone to load the laptops in a bag and walk off undetected,” Director of Campus Safety Services and Risk Management Paul Gravel said. “So the short answer is, we checked the cameras in the garage and entrance with no luck. Unless we saw someone walking with laptops, we have no way to determine [based on the cameras].”

Campus Safety additionally reached out to schools for laptop device numbers and worked with the Information Technology Department to check if the laptops were activated onto the Exeter network. 

Exeter also contacted the Police Department, according to their memorandum of understanding, where Campus Safety is required to report any losses over $500 to the Exeter Police Department within 48 hours. The Police Department is currently handling the investigation.

The culprits could have been from within the Exeter community or from the outside, as Exeter opens its facilities to the public. “I know that people utilize our gym; they are authorized to be there, but they're there at their own risk. It's really unfortunate and very embarrassing for us, but that comes from having an athletic facility that's pretty much open to the public,” Gravel said. “We don't check IDs on the way and we don't have somebody sitting at a desk to make sure everyone that goes in has an affiliation with the Academy.”

Campus Safety discussed the potential of locking buildings down and closing them to the public, though the decision would have to be made by the administration. “We would have to change the culture of Exeter. It's not like we're getting these incidents every single day. We've talked about it. It would be a big undertaking to be able to lock all the doors down and have one central point of entry because we have hockey rinks in the back, the pool in the front and Love Gym,” Gravel said. “I think it's kind of the risk that we take having an open campus, but the alternative is you don't have an open campus, and that is not what we are about.”

Potential consequences for the culprit include felony changes. “Culprits could be charged with jail time, three and a half to seven years with around a $1,500 to $3,000 fine. They would also have to give back the victims the items that were taken. But we don't know if it was one person or a couple of people working in concert,” Gravel said. “We are limited in our camera coverage, so we weren’t able to use the cameras as an investigative tool.”

Items have been stolen from the athletic facility in the past. Three years ago, a couple entered the facility and stole a few items, including a Rolex watch. “The female was dressed up in PEA colored sweats and a sweatshirt, and no one really questioned her because she looked like somebody that had an affiliation with the school,” Gravel said. 

“We were able to get them on video as they were leaving. We got lucky as there was a car parked across the street near Elliott Street on the corner. A police officer was coming by and very rarely are there cars parked there, so they stopped to take note of the license plate. They knew the name of the person; it was someone that [they'd] had dealings with before,” Gravel said. 

“When we reported the thefts, they put one and one together, and they came up with two suspects, who we picked out on the camera, and then, the next day, we got information that they were back in the athletic complex,” Gravel said. “We went down, we called the police and the police stopped them coming out of the Love Gym complex, and they subsequently arrested them. I don't know what the outcome was, but they went through the courts system.”

Campus Safety does receive reports from students of money, jackets or other items stolen from campus. Usually, these incidents occur in dorms, and items were, at times, usually the dorms, but items were simply misplaced or mistakenly taken.

Moving forward, Campus Safety has asked the Athletics Department to post signage inside visiting locker rooms about securing valuables and asked building monitors to watch out for suspicious behavior. “We're always looking at it: how can we eliminate issues and how can we curb any type of theft like this? But it's really difficult. That's why we always ask the students to see something, say something,” Gravel said. “If something doesn't look right, let us check it out. We'll check it out.”

Members of the Andover Squash team did notice their missing laptops until their return to Andover. “I had last used my laptop in my last class period of the day, and I traveled directly from my last class to the team's bus, which was departing right after classes ended at 1 pm, so I found it suspicious that it had suddenly gone missing,” Andover lower Brooks Robinson ’22.

Other Andover students had similar stories. Most brought laptops to Exeter in hopes of getting homework done on the bus rides. As Robinson retraced his footsteps around Andover, he found three of his teammates in the dining hall also searching for missing laptops. Robinson then contacted his coach and the rest of the team. “When I heard this, I went back to my dorm to see if mine was also taken, and it was,” Andover lower Shep Hearle said.

“A fifth member of my team had also lost his computer, and all of us had brought our computers into the Exeter locker room,” Robinson added. After reporting this to Andover’s Public Safety team, who then contacted Exeter, both schools worked together to discover who stole the laptops. 

Players without laptops were unable to request loaner computers until two days after the incident. At first, Andover’s Information Technology Department did not allow the squash team members to receive loaners as only those with faulty laptops were eligible under Andover policy. By the afternoon of the next day, Andover lent players loaner laptops. However, going a few days without a laptop meant that the players needed extensions for assignments and homework that required computer access. 

Robinson hoped that the problem would be resolved soon. “I would hope Exeter would take accountability for these actions occurring on their campus and compensate myself and my teammates for the expenses it will take us to buy new laptops,” he said. “But this seems very unlikely due to the fact that they did not find a suspect and Exeter's athletic facilities are open to the public, so they cannot determine that it was an Exeter student who stole them.”