I-75's notorious Ice Pick Bandit has struck again, this time in Turner County, Georgia, hitting a truck and trailer's tires and cutting its brake lines as well.
"One of my owner operators had his trailer lines cut and 11 tires punctured in Sycamore, Georgia, at the southbound rest area" at mile marker 78, said a representative from Southern Pride Trucking. The attack occurred in the early morning hours of Tuesday, April 2, while the driver "was parked overnight on an exit ramp. He did make a police report to authorities in Georgia."
Like the majority of other known cases, it happened with the driver parked on an off-ramp. And luckily, the driver noticed the vandalism before taking off, and got the truck fixed.
I tried repeatedly to get the Turner County Sheriff's Office comment on the case, also to see if the county had coordinated with any other jurisdictions. The Ice Pick Bandit, known to pretty much every tire shop up and down I-75 in south Georgia and north Florida, has vandalized trucks for almost a year now -- that we know of.
I informed contacts within the Florida Highway Patrol of the recent incident in Georgia, hoping to spur some cooperation between the states, maybe an escalation of the case. FHP said it referred that information to its Criminal Bureau Section, which is assigned to investigate these incidents, but did not share steps FHP had taken in the investigation.
In June of last year, FHP put out a press release and images of a suspect. Yet despite a statewide effort from FHP, the bandit (or a collection of them, as it were) remains on the loose.
[Related: Ice Pick Bandit still attacking trucks]
