Nantucket Students Tried To Rent An Airbnb But Got Ignored. They Broke In Anyway And Threw A Party

It was mid-October when Edith Stone Lentini received a “sketchy” request to rent her Nantucket home on Field Avenue through Airbnb.

The person requesting the one-night rental for Oct. 28 said she wanted to throw a Halloween party for her daughter and her friends and ended the message by stating, “It wouldn’t even really be a party. I will leave the house spotless and I’m sure nothing will be ruined.”

It left her suspicious, so Lentini ignored the message and didn’t think about it again until she received a call from the Nantucket Police Department a few weeks later, just before 10 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1st.

The officer on the line asked if she knew a party was happening at her house.

“I said, ‘No, there should not be’,” Lentini recalled. “They said, ‘Well, there’s a house party going on.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God!’ They said, ‘Let us call you back’.”

As it turned out, the local high school students who sent the original Airbnb request didn’t like being ignored. They broke into the house through an unlocked window, Nantucket police told Lentini, and their Halloween party was in full swing when officers responded to the area for a noise complaint.

Lentini feared the worst, presuming that her house had been trashed, and her furniture and artwork damaged. She flew out to Nantucket on Sunday, and what she saw when she arrived at her home on Field Avenue left her even more surprised.

“I have to say, they did take care,” Lentini said. “They took all the pictures and mirrors off the walls. They took all the pillows off the sofa and put them in the basement. They moved all the furniture aside, rolled up my white carpet and moved it into the screened-in porch, and moved my TV. As much as I’m upset about this, they did take care of the house. The most damage was just sticky floors. They even put ‘do not enter’ tape around the TV stand.”

After speaking further with the Nantucket Police Department officers investigating the break-in, Lentini also learned more about how the kids pulled it off.

The girl who originally messaged Lentini was found to have posted about the house on Snapchat, recording a video of herself decorating the interior in preparation for the party, Lentini told the Current. Officers told her that the kids were just 14 and 15 years old and that their plan entailed having ninth graders come to the house at a certain time, followed by 10th graders at a later time, and so on.

“The audacity of it and the fact she staggered the grades!” Lentini remarked. “But knowing my house was not wrecked, I can take humor from it and say she should really become a party planner. I would hate for this to hinder her in her future.”

All that was left behind - besides the sticky floors - was an Amazon monitor and a bottle of Tito’s vodka.

“I said ‘at least they have good taste’,” Lentini added. “I want to thank my neighbors that they knew enough to call. If I wasn’t in a year-round neighborhood, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Lentini's home on Field Avenue was last assessed by the town in 2024 at $2.3 million. It rents in the summer for $5,500 per week, or $780 per night.

While the Nantucket Police Department confirmed the break-in, it declined to release the police report from the incident, citing the fact that all the individuals involved are juveniles.

Lt. Angus MacVicar said the department first caught wind of what was happening after receiving a report of “youths in the area making loud noises. While investigating that report, we determined that the kids being called about were in this house on Field Avenue.”

MacVicar added that officers are conducting an “extensive investigation” but have not yet determined if any charges would be filed.