DATE: Thursday, June 19, 1997               TAG: 9706190568

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: TULLS CREEK                       LENGTH:   50 lines

VANDALS DESTROY $100,000 WORTH OF PHONE ELECTRONICS

Currituck County sheriff's deputies are searching for vandals who destroyed $100,000 worth of telephone equipment and knocked out the phone service of 200 people for two days.

Sprint is offering a $500 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

Investigators believe the vandals fired a shotgun twice about 12:15 a.m. Monday into the electronic innards of telephone equipment housed in a wooden shed across from Tulls Bay Marina on Tulls Creek Road. Telephone service was out in the area until 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

``The shotgun pellets happened to hit the most sensitive part,'' said George Dudley, manager of external communications with Sprint. Dudley said this is the worst case of destruction to telephone equipment he has seen in 10 years. Dudley, based in Winston-Salem, deals with equipment in 67 of North Carolina's 100 counties.

``I don't ever recall an incident where we've had to repair a concentrator unit,'' he said.

A concentrator normally receives about 200 lines from customers and reduces it to 100 lines which connect to the central office.

``It was a pretty despicable thing to do,'' said Bill Klyver, owner of B&T Outboard Service on Tulls Creek Road. ``The worst thing is if there had been a fire in the colony or somebody had gotten sick, they would've been out of luck.''

Klyver said it killed phone service to his business Monday and Tuesday. He had to use his cellular phone to make contact with suppliers and customers. Klyver repairs boat motors. He said the first two days after a weekend are his busiest times.

``It's hard to say how much business I lost,'' Klyver said. ``Luckily it was no more than two days.''

A central computer system notified Sprint immediately when the unit was destroyed, Dudley said. The part had to be ordered from Nashville, Tenn., he said.

Klyver lives near the 8-foot by 10-foot shed that housed the concentrator.

``My daughter heard the shotgun blast,'' he said.

Investigators determined that the vandals likely stuck the shotgun though an 8-foot chain link fence that surrounded the shed and fired two shots. The two shotgun shells had nine pellets each indicating a large-size shot, said Susan Johnson, spokeswoman for the sheriff's department.

Klyver said the wads from the shotgun shells were still in the wood siding.

There no suspects yet, Johnson said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff's department at 232-3771.

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