Northside residents reported a string of vandalism in late March in and around Building 13.
Several residents of Northside Building 13 reported graffiti both in stairwells and on unit front doors, in a string of vandalism that was featured on March 27 in an Instagram post from utdbruhmoments. Richardson PD officer Teddy Yoshida said that police have no specific statement at this time, but a follow-up investigation is underway.
Northside resident Om Patel’s front door was one of the units tagged in March. Patel said that he did not know many other residents and did not believe the vandalism was targeted.
“It was like male genitalia, basically,” Patel said.
Patel said that graffiti tags were left on several floors of the 13C stairwell. He caught the attention of a maintenance worker painting over the stairwell tags, who quickly fixed his door as well. Stairwell 13C, the epicenter of the graffiti tags, has a broken exterior door and opens when forced despite being locked.
“That’s a big problem,” Patel said. “Most of the doors here, like you have the little fob that you scan, but they don’t, they’re not locked properly. So, you can just yank the bottom staircase door. You just yank it open, and it opens right up. It’s not secure.”
Mechanical engineering junior Mitchell Mello was one of the first people to report the graffiti and mentioned it in the Northside GroupMe to let other residents know. Mello did not believe the graffiti was targeted toward anyone.
“There is nothing mean about any of it,” Mello said. “It was just normal graffiti with people drawing stuff that they found funny or something that they thought was cool.”
Residents of Northside have raised security concerns in the past, with Mello citing package theft as a frequent problem. Outside of the first floor, Northside Building 13 does not have any security cameras in its hallways.
“I’m not worried about my safety because I don’t think there’s anyone trying to harm anyone here,” Mello said. “But it’s not a secure place where I feel like ‘oh, no one will ever break in.’ If someone really wanted to get in, they could.”
The Mercury contacted Northside management with a request for comment but received no response.
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