Three recent car thefts in the past three weeks on Wichita State’s main campus have left the university police department puzzled.

Honda Accords were frequent cases in late 2012, but more recently thieves have been stealing a string of other vehicles, including a 92’ Oldsmobile Ciera, a 94’ GMC Sierra pickup, a 06’ Mercury Milan and the catalytic converters off older model Toyota 4Runners.

“What’s puzzling about these three is that these are not commonly stolen vehicles so that’s kind of odd,” University Police Detective Jeff Rider said. “We do have a suspect in one of the cases and we’re following through on that. But we don’t know if the three are related in any way.”

The Oldsmobile and GMC Sierra were stolen from the parking lot on Hillside Street near Duerksen Fine Arts Center and the Mercury Milan stolen from the lot behind Grace Wilkie Hall.

Honda Accords were being targeted for their catalytic converters, which in Japan are made with platinum and are worth $60 or $80 more than American-made converters. He said most stolen converters are sold to dealerships around the Wichita-area — no questions asked — for about $100.

The person responsible for the stolen Honda Accords was arrested after Wichita Police Department officers traced a string of thefts back to one individual. Since then, the thieves have taken to the Toyota 4Runners catalytic converters.

“We haven’t had any stolen Honda Accords since then,” Rider said. “Someone went from stealing the Honda Accords to coming out here … and all they do is they put this chain around [the catalytic converters] and they just ratchet it and it cuts.”

It takes about 30 seconds to steal a converter off a car, Rider said. When a student starts the vehicle, it makes a louder sound than usual after a converter has been stripped off the exhaust pipe.

There were three cases of stolen catalytic converters in December and two in January. Rider doesn’t suspect there’s a connection between the stolen converters off 4Runners and the three stolen cars.

Yet, Rider said he wants to assure students that the WSU campus is safer than most.

“The campus itself is very safe,” he said. “It’s probably a safe, if not the safest, place in Sedgwick County because there’s a lot of officers in a small space. You probably can’t sit anywhere for a couple of minutes without seeing one of our guys patrolling around.”