A Nebraska teenager has been charged with intentionally provoking a train wreck in order to video and upload it on YouTube.
BNSF Railway investigators took the 17-year-old’s smartphone and 4 K digital recorder on July 8 in connection with the derailment that occurred months before.
He reportedly informed investigators after the April 21st incident that he recorded the Bennet disaster, which occurred when two trains and five coal trains at full capacity went off the rails yet stayed upright. A report shows that they hit an empty coal car parked on the side before stopping.
After the incident, a train conductor informed a railroad company investigator that a switch was displaced as his train approached a crossing eastward. The switch diverted the train onto a grain elevator-side industrial track. The conductor attempted to make an emergency stop just before the crash but failed.
The investigator subsequently located a missing padlock on the switch, suggesting tampering.
The teenager arrived at the collision site and enquired about the derailment, mentioning that he had videotaped it on his phone. An affidavit showed that the teen said he thought a switch had been flipped to the wrong side after investigators told him they had no idea what caused the derailment. The teen denied trespassing and tripping the switch, but the detective noted that he understood where and how it functioned.
The affidavit states that three days after the disaster, the BNSF investigator found surveillance footage showing a car and the teen approaching the switch with his camera tripod on the south end of the lines.
He was seen returning to his car after the disaster, which caused more than a quarter of a million dollars in damages to the railway and the power company, which controls the rails that transport coal to a facility in Nebraska City.
According to Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon, the teen was charged with criminal mischief and is not in police custody. Condon requested that the case be transferred to adult court.
