'Why would somebody do this?': Waukesha residents baffled after Christmas vandalism

WAUKESHA, Wis. (CBS 58) – A merry Christmas turned ugly in one neighborhood when a woman spent hours vandalizing property.

"When I went back inside, she came right back again," Waukesha resident Chuck Everette said.

Everette did not know it at the time, but he almost came face to face with a woman now in custody for damaging dozens of homes and cars on Monday, Dec. 25, including his.

"She actually went through every single part of the car. She scratched it enough where metal shavings, curly q's, were coming off. She did that on every single quarter panel of the hood, all the way around the vehicle, and she did that to everybody's vehicle," he explained.

His various home security cameras caught the woman scratching up his car and slashing his tires throughout the night, as well as him going outside to grab something from his vehicle while she stood at the end of his driveway.

"Literally, I can see her on the camera and me coming out at the same time, and it was just like, you got to be kidding me?" Everette told CBS 58. "The last time she came by was 8:45. That's when she spray-painted the vehicles. That's when she went and spray painted the next-door neighbors' house, their garage doors, their windows."

He said crimes rarely happen in the Oakdale subdivision, so it was a traumatic incident.

"It was shock and just anger. Why would somebody do this?" Everette said. "You almost feel violated just because it is such a good neighborhood."

Police arrested 40-year-old Anna Michalkiewicz for the vandalism after finding her red-handed, damaging a vehicle around midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 26.

"We don't know if this were to be true with all of the damage, but she had a conch shell," Waukesha Police Capt. Dan Baumann said. "She was damaging one of the vehicles, and that's when one of the officers located her with this."

So far, Waukesha police have 23 reported incidents of damage totaling tens of thousands of dollars. While Michalkiewicz lives close to the area, police said they are unsure of why she targeted the neighborhood.

Despite wishing he would have noticed Michalkiewicz that night, Everette believes it was for the best.

"She did have that box cutter knife in her hand, the way you can see her in the videos and what she was doing. If you would've tried stopping her, she obviously was in some type of mental distress," he said.

Waukesha police said many of the vandalized vehicles had out-of-state license plates, so they encourage people with potential damage related to this incident to call their non-emergency number at 262-524-3831.