Whenever we arrive at a theater, the local staff are surprised to see we have guards watching our busses and trucks 24\/7. “Is that really necessary?” they ask.<\/p>\n
The vehicle incidents started in 2010. After performing in Ottawa and driving to Montreal that January, our bus driver noticed a strange cut mark on a front tire of the dancers’ bus. Upon inspection, bus service personnel in Montreal said that the slashes were made by a blade. The tire was slashed in such a way that the tire would not go flat right away. Only several layers of rubber were cut, so that the tire would burst after it heated up and expanded while driving. The fact it was the front tire that was slashed is critical, because if the tire burst the bus would lose control -\u00c2\u00a0with 50 people on board. \u00c2\u00a0The case was reported to Canadian police.<\/p>\n
Three days later, a tire on the bus of one of Shen Yun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s other companies burst at 1am while traveling in the United States on I-40 West between Memphis and Little Rock, AR. This was the first time in four years one of the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s buses had a burst or flat tire. Two days later, while in Little Rock, the same company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truck, during a pre-trip inspection, discovered slashes on one of its tires.<\/p>\n
With\u00c2\u00a0guards watching the vehicles, no further incidents were reported in 2011 and 2012. But over the last couple of years, our guards have noticed an increase in suspicious activities around our vehicles, including direct attempts to tamper with them.<\/p>\n
In January 2013, outside of Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA, two men were spotted lingering closely behind Shen Yun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truck, which was\u00c2\u00a0parked near the theater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s backstage entrance. A security guard finally approached them and the men left. Later, upon inspection, a gash was found on the truck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fuel tank, though no puncture had been made.<\/p>\n
The following month another incident took place, this one in Fort Worth, TX.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0At 4am, a security guard watching Shen Yun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vehicles saw a vehicle approach the Shen Yun prop truck. A man stepped out of the vehicle and went over to the Shen Yun truck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gas tank and began inserting a hose into it. The security guard approached this man and challenged him: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are you doing?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The man quickly hid whatever he was holding and said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing, just servicing the truck\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (at 4:00! No truck service had been requested). As the guard continued questioning him, the man stepped into his vehicle, where another person was waiting, and they quickly drove away, almost hitting the guard. The guard chased him in his own car and called the police. The guard, and later the police, chased this vehicle for several miles, before the two men abandoned their vehicle and fled on foot in a suburb called Irving. The police could not find them.<\/p>\n
And then in March 2014, soon after arriving at Costa Mesa, CA ahead of a five-day run at the prestigious Segerstrom Center for the Arts, guards watching Shen Yun’s buses and truck noticed suspicious activity around it.\u00c2\u00a0At 1:15 am, four security guards noticed a man in his 20s quietly approaching the vehicles. When confronted by the guards, he\u00c2\u00a0ran away. Four hours later, around 5am, another man approached, but when a guard spotted him, he ran off as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whenever we arrive at a theater, the local staff are surprised to see we have guards watching our busses and trucks 24\/7. “Is that really necessary?” they ask. The vehicle incidents started in 2010. After performing in Ottawa and driving to Montreal that January, our bus driver noticed a strange cut mark on a front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}