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Nails have been found littering Dallas streets. Now police say they've caught the 'nail bandit'

A tire punctured with nails in Portland. North Texas law enforcement says a "nail bandit" who's littered streets with roofing nails has been arrested.
AP
/
Portland Police Department
A tire punctured with nails in Portland. North Texas law enforcement says a "nail bandit" who's littered streets with roofing nails has been arrested.

Have you found nails scattered across your Dallas-area neighborhood?

Police say they've found the "nail bandit" responsible.

Police in the Park Cities have noticed roofing nails strewn across streets and intersections over the last few weeks — a string of incidents they say was connected to a Grand Prairie man arrested in Collin County on Monday.

Plano police officers arrested Kevin Genter, 45, in connection with a shooting incident that occurred on Saturday outside of the Toyota headquarters building. No one was injured, but police say the driver of a dark colored four-door sedan was spotted at the scene.

Toyota security said the vehicle's description matched a sedan that had littered the Toyota parking lot with nails late last week, and police linked the car to Genter, who was arrested for deadly conduct related to the shooting.

"'Nail bandit' arrested," Plano PD tweeted Monday night.

Now Plano police are working with University Park Police Department, Highland Park Police Department and Southern Methodist University Police Department on their investigations, and that Genter could face additional charges.

Stories of nails littering the roads have spread around social media for days. A Reddit post asking about the trend had more than 50 comments and 99 upvotes as of Tuesday afternoon.

"Someone is either throwing bags of roofing nails or they're spreading them across multiple roadways," the Redditor wrote. "My neighbor said she drove through University Park and every tire has a nail in it."

"This is bizarre," one commenter said. "I was visiting Plano at a large company's HQ last week and saw this happen! Someone drove into the visitor car circle and threw hundreds of nails out the window in piles. Security said that they hit several employee entrances/exits as well."

Another comment read: "It’s basically a daily occurrence at this point."
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Paul DeBenedetto