Police are looking for a man they are calling a serial rock thrower after another downtown business reported that someone broke a window with a rock.
“They’re happening during the daylight hours,” San Marcos Police Commander Kelly Bomersbach said during a press conference Friday. “That’s kind of unique.”
Bomersbach said that on the morning of Jan. 3, a regular customer at Cafe on the Square was waiting outside for the business to open at 7. She saw a man, described as a heavier-set white or Hispanic male wearing a gray hoodie and khaki pants, break a window at the cafe.
“Apparently he picked up a rock or had a rock with him and threw it through the window,” Bomersbach said. “She watched and reported that he was leaving the scene, and we weren’t able to catch up to him.”
Police are now asking members of the public who might know the man to come forward. Bomersbach said Cafe on the Square’s cameras got “pretty decent video, so we’re pretty hopeful someone comes forward.”
If caught, the suspect would face criminal mischief charges, Bomersbach said, though the level of misdemeanor would depend on the cost of the windows broken.
Regarding the term “serial rock thrower,” Bomersbach said it is apt.
“If there’s three, I think it qualifies as a series,” she said.
On Dec. 27, someone threw rocks through windows at Sean Patrick’s on LBJ Drive and the KZSM Community Radio studio on Guadalupe Street. Bomersbach said that while there have been other recent window breakages at downtown businesses — including Blue Moon Optical, where a window was broken out in mid-December — there hadn’t been a rash of incidents like the three recent breakages in less than 10 days’ time.
Anyone with information about the rock thrower is asked to contact the San Marcos Police Department at 512-753-2108. KZSM, which is nonprofit and run entirely by volunteers, is accepting donations to help with its window replacement at KZSM.org.
A woman has started a GoFundMe page to raise money to help all the businesses affected.
