ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Two teenage boys are facing charges after Rochester Police say they were riding in a stolen Hyundai that witnesses spotted at the scene of multiple car break-ins.

Those car break-ins happened in the Park Avenue neighborhood on Thursday morning, amid a string of break-ins across the Rochester area this winter. After chasing the Hyundai, officers arrested a 14-year-old who they identified as the driver and a 16-year-old passenger.

Both are charged with criminal possession of stolen property and reckless endangerment. They’re also charged with criminal mischief because the Hyundai hit a parked car during the chase.

Officers were called to the neighborhood just before 1 a.m. after getting reports of windows smashed on Vassar Street and Thayer Street. At both locations, officers got the same description of a car involved. Later, officers found windows smashed on Dartmouth Street and Rutgers Street 

A police sergeant saw a car matching the description on nearby Rutgers Street. According to RPD, when the sergeant’s patrol car approached, two people got into the stolen Hyundai and drove directly at the sergeant, almost causing a head-on crash.

That led to the chase, which ended in a crash on South Clinton Avenue near Averill Avenue. RPD took one teen in custody at the scene and caught the other one after a foot chase. No one was injured during the chase.

The 14-year-old was taken to the Monroe County Children’s Center and the 16-year-old remains in RPD custody ahead of his morning court appearance.

RPD is asking anyone who had their car damaged around Park Avenue, saw anything, or has security footage to call 911. More than a hundred cars have been damaged across the county since January.

This weekend, a dozen cars were broken into in the city’s Corn Hill neighborhood and on Friday, at least 16 cars were broken into across several Brighton apartment complexes.

A week earlier, another 15 cars had their windows smashed across two downtown parking lots, on East Avenue and Main Street. In the last week of January, dozens of cars had their windows smashed on University Avenue, East Avenue, Rowley Street in the Park Avenue neighborhood, and an apartment complex on Manor Parkway off South Avenue.

Two weeks before that, around 40 car windows were smashed on Oxford Street off East Avenue and several other city neighborhoods. Several more windows were smashed near Cobbs Hill Park days later. 

If your car is broken into, here’s some advice on how to report it, file an insurance claim, and why not to use duct tape to patch your window.

Car break-in investigation around Rutgers and Thayer streets:

Crash around South Clinton and Averill avenues: