It’s not often that a home break-in is preceded by an Airbnb request to rent it out for a night. Or that the trespassers take pains to ensure that nothing is broken, for that matter.
But that’s what happened last month to a Nantucket homeowner, who says teenagers chose her newly renovated cottage — which she rents out on Airbnb — as the perfect place to throw a schoolwide party. She says she ignored a suspicious request to rent out the home, so the teenagers allegedly broke in and threw the bash anyway.
Nantucket police said they are investigating a Nov. 1 break-in at 20 Field Ave. by a number of juveniles, according to Lieutenant Angus MacVicar. No charges have been filed in the case, which was previously reported by the Nantucket Current.
“I’m thoroughly happy that I am in a year-round neighborhood, where my neighbors knew enough to call [the police] because something seemed, obviously, out of the ordinary,’’ Edith Stone Lentini, who owns the Field Avenue home, said in an interview.
Neighbors called the police around 9:30 p.m. to report “kids yelling’’ in the area, police said. When officers arrived, they identified the Lentini house as the source of the commotion, causing the people on the property to “scatter.’’
Lentini, 47, who lives in Armonk, N.Y., had no idea why police were calling her until they told her there was a party going on at her house.
She quickly realized it might have something to do with a “sketchy’’ Airbnb request she had received for that week. Lentini said she had gotten a message from “Alice,’’ asking to rent the house for a Halloween party, supposedly for their daughter and her friends.
“There were [sic] not be many kids there and they are all 14-15 years old,’’ the message read. “They just wanna do a fun dress up get-together to take some pictures and eat some pizza you know? It wouldn’t even really be a party. I will leave the house spotless and I’m sure nothing will be ruined.’’
Although new to the Airbnb platform, Lentini ignored the odd request.
“Once I put two and two together, it was obviously a child writing the message,’’ she said. “Because the end [of the message] was, ‘I’m sure nothing will get ruined.’ That’s not how you ask a host to rent you out.’’
But she didn’t think anything of it until police called to inform her they had detained several youth on her property.
Lentini said that officers later told her the person behind the Airbnb messages was the same person who organized the party — a freshman in high school. Without the access codes to the house, they apparently got in through an unlocked window, she said.
Because minors were involved, police declined to provide details about the investigation. MacVicar said it was unclear how many teenagers were involved in planning the party.
“A lot of kids were in attendance, but not all of them are part of the investigation,’’ MacVicar said. “They wouldn’t necessarily be charged.’’
Lentini said police told her the organizers invited dozens of people from their high school and even took care to spread out the arrivals.
“So like, ninth grade would come at eight o’clock, 10th grade would come at nine o’clock, and so on and so forth, because the house obviously isn’t big enough to hold an entire high school of kids,’’ she said. The party planner was “inventive enough’’ to “scatter the grain,’’ she quipped.
The planner also made good on one promise, taking care to ensure that nothing in the house was broken, Lentini said. They rolled up the house’s white carpet, put all the glass picture frames in the basement, and even wrapped some of the couch cushions in garbage bags so they wouldn’t be stained.
“I appreciate that they were bright enough to know that any more damage would just be on their heads,’’ Lentini said. “You know, I’m a New Yorker — it could have been a lot worse. I was very happy to see that it wasn’t as bad as my mind was racing; I’m thinking [they are] spray painting the walls, spray painting my artwork, whatever. It was really just sticky floors and a big cleanup.’’
MacVicar said the party was “definitively’’ a one-time event. But Lentini, whose family has been vacationing on Nantucket since the 19th century, said she doesn’t want a similar situation to happen again.
“I’m kind of like, you know, I don’t want to bring any problems to the island’’ by pressing charges, she said. “I thoroughly respect it. But also, it is 2024 — kids gotta learn.’’
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.
