Vandal Chooses Wrong Car to Spray Paint in Bid to Get Back at 'Cheating' Boyfriend
A vandal in Washington, D.C. apparently chose the wrong car to spray paint when trying to get revenge on their "cheating" boyfriend.
Military veteran Nedra Brantley awoke last Sunday morning to find that someone had vandalized her red Mitsubishi Outlander Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV). The vandal had spray-painted the message "Mike is a cheater" on the vehicle's hood and driver-side doors.
The vandal knocked off the SUV's side mirrors, smashed its front and back windshields, and covered its license plates as well as its side windows in black spray paint.
Brantley told WRC-TV that she doesn't know anyone named Mike.
"I screamed," she said about first seeing her vandalized vehicle.
"I'm surprised nobody in the neighborhood heard me, because I screamed so, so loud, because I didn't expect this would happen," Brantley continued.
She called the police. They told her that the vandalism was likely a case of "mistaken identity." It's unclear whether a surveillance video camera or other witnesses saw the vandalism taking place.
Newsweek reached out to the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) for comment.
Brantley has said that her car insurance company has pledged to fully cover all the damages.
The vandalization of a cheating man's vehicle by an angry ex-girlfriend forms the basis of the 2005 Carrie Underwood country song Before He Cheats. The song became one of the best-selling country songs of all time.
But while such vandalism may seem like a theatrical display of a broken heart, it's actually a form of intimidation, according to law professor Deborah Tuerkheimert's 2013 article in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. In her article, Tuerkheimert called such vandalism a form of harassment meant to make a person fearful of a possible assault, bodily injury or death.
Approximately one in nine men has experienced severe intimate partner physical violence including intimidation, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV). About one in 18 men has been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point that they felt very fearful, the NCADV reported. That figure represents 5.1 million men nationwide.
Many men may not report such violence or stalking, especially when it occurs at the hands of a woman, because they fear being perceived as unmanly.
As of November 18, there have been 21,226 cases of property crimes in Washington, D.C., including vandalism against vehicles, according to MPD. The number is 2 percent higher than the total number of property crimes in D.C. in 2020.
