Sunbeam Elementary School on Cleveland’s East Side shut its doors this month after vandals smashed the windows of staff vehicles parked outside the school and a report of shots fired turned out to be false, leaving 94% of the school’s general education teachers and 75% of its overall staff calling off work. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is now rushing to install a new gate at the Mt. Overlook Avenue campus and has added extra security to help protect the building going forward.
Cleveland police responded to Sunbeam Elementary on September 9 after a report of shots fired near the school, according to Cleveland.com. Officers determined there had been no actual gunshots, but they found several vehicles in the staff parking area with broken windows. CMSD spokesman Jon Benedict said nothing was stolen from the cars and that the damage was limited to broken windows, though the scare was still enough to keep most of the school’s staff away in the days that followed. The district reopened Sunbeam on September 10 after adding security and moving to install a gate in the staff lot that week.
A Pattern Stretching Back to Last December
The Sunbeam incident lands less than a year after a wave of vehicle break-ins hit Cleveland Metropolitan School District campuses, the same Cleveland.com report notes. Multiple CMSD schools were targeted in December, with some campuses reporting 10 or more vehicles hit in a single day. Max S. Hayes High School alone reported at least 15 daytime break-ins in one day, and the outlet identified Robert Jamison, Wilson, Joseph Gallagher, John F. Kennedy, Marion Seltzer and Mary B. Martin schools as also affected.
School officials told the outlet that safety and security officers have historically focused on securing school interiors rather than watching parking lots, a gap that left staff vehicles exposed even as students and classrooms stayed protected.
Suspect Faces Multiple Felony Counts
Cleveland police identified 26-year-old Cleveland resident Deangelo Simms as the suspect in the Sunbeam incident, connecting him to an attempted carjacking involving a woman and two youths. Detectives identified the suspect vehicle through surveillance footage and Real Time Crime Center resources; the car had been reported stolen out of Eastlake. That capability lines up with the technology Cleveland uses to track suspects, since the Real Time Crime Center integrates Fusus software across more than 3,400 city surveillance cameras alongside Flock Safety license plate readers that can track vehicles across municipal boundaries, per Signal Cleveland…