DRAPER, Utah — The three-brick-thick Ben Meek House has been a Victorian beauty on Fort Street in Draper since 1899. Now police are searching for suspects after a cast-iron mailbox suddenly exploded this week.
The house’s historic charm is one of the many reasons Amy Bouck and her family decided to rent it.
“We’ve been in Draper for about 12 or 13 years and we’ve driven by here so many times and I’ve always just found these houses so charming,” Bouck said.
Since the house is a landmark of the city, Bouck was surprised when the mailbox exploded on Monday evening.
“I was just upstairs in my bedroom that faces out here, heard the bang, it sounded like a bomb, and I looked out the window and saw smoke and I didn’t know what it was,” she explained. “As we got closer, we saw that the mailbox was broken into pieces.”
Days later, debris from the explosion can still be found more than six meters from where the mailbox stood.
“If someone had been nearby and been hit by one of those pieces – they were really sharp pieces – someone could have been hurt,” Bouck feared.
Amy doesn’t believe the explosion was an accident, “because it was raining and there were car tracks in front of the mailbox. So it looked like someone had driven up and maybe thrown it from their car into the mailbox.”
Draper police say material was collected at the scene but cannot yet be identified. The search for suspects is ongoing and police say they may face charges.
Bouck believes it may have been a last-minute summer prank that went too far.
“We have teenagers in the house, so we get electrocutions every now and then,” she said. “They come and cut off our electricity to have fun, but never to the extent that they destroy property.”
While a prank may seem harmless, handling risky materials can have consequences, according to police.
Amy just hopes that the suspects are found and learn a valuable lesson.
“I’m all for fun, awesome kids, we all did it growing up,” she said. “I think it’s only when it gets to the point where you’re destroying property and potentially hurting people that I say, ‘Oh, you know, that’s not cool.'”
