RED LION, Pa. -- Jeff Hawse and his wife Katie Gangloff had just finished a geocaching trip with their children, as they got into their car the light hit just right. "We saw the dents on the hood, and once we noticed it we decided to check our camera system," said Jeff Hawse who had a feeling the damage happened while his car was parked outside of his home.
On security footage they found four teens doing what Hawse believes was a viral trend. "They did the 'put em in a coffin' thing on our cars. We saw it on YouTube a long time ago and as soon as we saw it, when you do a full body slam on the hood of a car, you know that's what it was," said Hawse.
The prank involves people jumping, full body, onto the hood of a car while yelling, 'Put em' in a coffin.' The trend started with a youtube video that went viral.
The surveillance video clearly shows two of the teens run and do a body slam onto the hood and roof of one of the cars. Another shot shows a teen doing a body slam onto the hood of another car. The stunts caused damage to two of their cars.
Hawse and his family recently moved to Red Lion and had to install security cameras shortly after because their cars were burglarized. The cameras came in handy with this incident. "Knowing we had the camera system we were confident we were going to catch them," he said.
As the couple combed through the footage they expected to find someone had done the damage at night, but they were surprised to find it happened around 7 p.m. in broad daylight. "We saw the kids looking around but they didn't look up to see the cameras, it was very surprising," said Gangloff.
The couple shared their footage on Facebook and within minutes it went viral, and led police straight to the culprits. "Within ten minutes we had the first name, and now we're up over 100,000 views, about 4,000 shares and it's only been since yesterday [Sunday] morning," said Gangloff.
The couple said police have identified all four of the teens, and at least one has been charged with criminal mischief. One of the boys has already apologized to the family. "His parents were pretty upset, and after they spoke with the police I guess they really wanted to come down and meet us. His father actually shared the video himself before he realized it was his own son in the video," said Hawse. "He came down and apologized and he's offered to do a lot of yard work, anything he really can. He seems quite embarrassed."
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