Two couch burnings occurred this weekend after the announcement of Friday’s snow day, one was burned on Friday night in the road of Buffalo Street around 10 p.m. and the other was burned a few hours later, according to Chief Curtis Davis of the Farmville Police Department.
“The officers were able to get up there with a fire extinguisher to make sure that it didn’t catch on fire… and turn into a bad fire. We would have had to call the fire department if that had happened. So, they (police officers) got there first and were able to put it out,” said Davis.
This is not the first occurrence of a couch being burned by Longwood students on the night before or night of a snow day. There was a couch burned on the eve of a snow day last February, another burned in 2012, and another two years before that.
“I don’t think that (a couch burning) should reflect on students. This is more of an individual type of thing. You’ve got so many students at Longwood that had absolutely nothing to do with that. I think it’s wrong to reflect on all of them with that incident. I mean, the town is considerate enough to shut the area down to give them (students) access, so they can have some fun when they’re snowed in, when they don’t have school, to be able to allow them to enjoy themselves….” said Davis. “….there’s always going to be some individuals that are going to do things.”
A perhaps unseen issue with the couch burnings is taking away attention from other matters that the police may have to take care of as well.
“They’re really tied up trying to help folks, help folks get vehicles out, and respond to rescue calls. It’s not typical, it takes four or five people to get to a rescue call now when something like that happens. To divert those resources away from those folks, it’s sad. But I don’t think that was their intent. So, hopefully they’ll recognize that, and hopefully it won’t be something that becomes a tradition.”
