Above: The source of booms in the night was tracked to the middle school. (photo by Susan Fitzgerald)
It turns out there was no need for confidential informants in the case of the midnight Booms. And happily, Parkerville area residents are able to sleep through the night at last.
If you aren’t familiar with the mystery, loud booming noises in the area of Parkerville Road have been waking residents in the middle of the night. According to one blog comment, the issue had been going on for at least 6 weeks.
Police patrolled the area to try to solve the mystery. They heard some of the incidents, but initially had trouble tracking the source. Theories abounded on this blog’s comment stream.
Finally, police determined that the source seemed to come from the rooftop of Trottier Middle School, echoing across the fields.
No, mischievous students weren’t sneaking back at night to set off cherry bombs. After police alerted the school that they believed something in their vent system may be the cause, the school found the culprit: a back-firing unit.
A part was replaced, the unit fixed. To the relief of neighbors and police, no noise complaints have been made since. One neighbor who had been plagued by the issue confirmed in comments that there hasn’t been a recurrence since Saturday.
The most interesting thing about this is why the unit only backfired at odd times of the night? One might think the unit would backfire during the day as well and then school administrators would have looked into this right away. Does anyone know what this unit does and why it only tried to kick on at night?
This has been the most interesting story in town in years.