PONTIAC, Mich. – Two men were arrested Wednesday for breaking into an abandoned Pontiac school building in the middle of the night, Oakland County police said.
Officials were called at 12:28 a.m. Wednesday to the former Jefferson Whittier School building at 600 Motor Street after multiple alarms were tripped. The school has been closed for years, and the building is now privately owned.
Deputies said they found a broken window on the east side of the building and a suspicious vehicle parked nearby on Alton Street. The vehicle was unlocked and the keys had been left inside.
The deputies followed footprints in the snow from the vehicle to the broken window. As they searched around the outside of the building, they saw people with flashlights inside the building. Deputies and a K-9 entered the school through the broken window and were told by officials outside that the people with the flashlights were on the roof.
Deputies got onto the roof through an open roof access hatch and found two men, a backpack with another flashlight inside and a pair of walkie-talkies.
The 17-year-old Macomb Township man and the 21-year-old Eastpointe man told police they are "explorers" of abandoned buildings. One of the men had written his Instagram username on a blackboard inside the building and admitted to breaking the window to get inside, police said.
The men told police they had not uploaded any photos from inside the school to their social media accounts.
Police discovered the vehicle on Alton Street belonged to the Eastpointe man, and it was impounded.
Both men were arrested and taken to the Oakland County Jail pending criminal charges.