BY NICHOLAS BROWN

A town-owned sand pit off Brown Road has been a hot spot for Candia police in recent weeks.

On May, 16, the town’s road agent, Dennis Lewis, reported that a Caterpillar-brand front-end loader belonging to a subcontractor had been vandalized while parked in the pit.

Police Chief Michael McGillen said windows were broken, apparently by some sort of projectiles.

McGillen said police didn’t find specific evidence of the projectiles, but said the damage to the windows will likely cost about $500.

“We didn’t find any rocks or any bullet casings,” he said. Police are still investigating the incident. 

On May 7, police responded to a call of off-road vehicles in the pit, which has posted signs prohibiting the use of off-road recreational vehicles, or OHRVs. A group of people on motorized dirt bikes fled once police got to the scene, said  McGillen.

“One of them got stuck on a hill,” McGillen said, and the rider told police he didn’t know the other riders until he met them on a nearby path earlier that day.

The rider, a 16-year-old from Derry, said he’d also flipped his bike earlier, and he was taken to a nearby hospital. The rider got a New Hampshire Fish and Game Department summons for riding an OHRV on posted property, McGillen said.

The department got other calls regarding illegal or inappropriate OHRV use on that weekend, he said, which is common when the weather warms.

He’s one of several area police chiefs worried that the Fish and Game Department’s OHRV grant – which Candia has received in each of the last four or five years – will be removed from the state’s budget.

McGillen and selectmen have each written local legislators to fight for the grant program, which provides money to pay for officers overtime to do occasional patrols on all-terrain vehicles.

“We’re not out there, every day, but it’s sporadic and you never know what you’ll find,” McGillen said. “From all the citizens I’ve heard from, they think this is a good program.”