Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #600

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Nebraska Teen Accused of Derailing Train, Recording The Crash And Posting It Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WcLkY0Qf4
make an emergency stop but ran out of time before the colli- sion, court records show.
he train conductor told a BNSF investi- gator that a mis- aligned switch led to the crash and that a padlock that was sup- posed to be attached to the switch was missing, the docu- ments said.
BNSF Railway oper- ates trains on the rail to supply coal to a power plant in Nebraska City.
The teenager, who reported the derail- ment to authorities, approached an inves- tigator after the crash and asked what caused it. When the investigator said it was undetermined, he responded that “obviously a switch was flipped the wrong way,” according to court records.
He told the investiga- tor he was a train enthusiast and showed him the video he had shot of the derailment, the records said.
Lancaster County
Attorney Patrick F. Condon declined to comment.
The teen denied tres- passing in the area and tampering with the switch, but the investigator pointed out in the documents that he knew where the switch was and how it worked.
Authorities later dis- covered that a tripod had been set up near the accident site just four minutes before the train derailed, court records show.
"In the days following the derailment,
a video of the derail- ment was posted to YouTube account ZUnit06, which is believed be associat- ed with [the teen]," an investigator said in the document. "This account features numerous videos of trains filmed in Bennet, NE and other locations in Lancaster County, NE."
The investigator said a video posted April 23 was titled "Loaded BNSF Arbor Collides and Derails In Bennet, NE!"
By Deon
J. Hampton, NBC News
A Nebraska teenager has been charged with two felony counts of criminal mischief after he was accused of causing a train to derail, record- ing the crash and posting the video on YouTube, according to court records.
The 17-year-old was charged in Lancaster County Juvenile Court on Wednesday, but prosecutors have filed a motion to have
the
case transferred to adult court.
An investigator with BNSF Railway said in court documents that the teenager alerted authorities to the derailment and asked the investigator who arrived what caused the crash.
He is accused of tam- pering with a rail and causing two locomo- tives and five loaded BNSF cars to jump the rails in Bennet on April 21.
It wasn’t clear whether the teen had retained an attorney, and his parents couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
While the railcars remained upright, one crashed into an empty coal car, caus- ing $350,000 in dam- age, an investigator for the rail company said in court records.
In the moments lead- ing up to the crash, the conductor tried to
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine