According to court documents, a juvenile from Nebraska has been charged with two felonies counts of criminal mischief after it was said that he caused a train to derrail, recorded the incident, and uploaded the footage to YouTube.
Although the 17-year-old was accused on Wednesday in Lancaster County Juvenile Court, the prosecution has submitted a move to move the case to adult court.
In court filings, a BNSF Railway investigator stated that the teenager reported the derailment to the authorities and inquired about the reason of the collision from the investigating officer upon their arrival.
He is charged with altering a rail such that on April 21 near Bennet, two locomotives and five loaded BNSF cars would jump the lines.
The adolescent may not have had legal representation, and his parents were not reachable on Thursday.
An investigator for the train business stated in court documents that although the railcars stayed upright, one of them smashed into an empty coal car, resulting in $350,000 worth of damage.
According to court documents, the conductor attempted an emergency stop in the seconds before the incident but ran out of time.
According to the records, the train conductor reported to a BNSF investigator that a misaligned switch caused the disaster and that a padlock that was meant to be fastened to the switch was absent.
Trains are operated by BNSF Railway to provide coal to a power plant located in Nebraska City.
After the collision, the adolescent contacted an investigator and inquired as to what caused the derailment, which he had reported to the authorities. He stated, “obviously a switch was flipped the wrong way,” in response to the investigator’s statement that it was unclear, according to court documents.
According to the papers, he showed the investigator the video he had taken of the disaster and informed him that he was an avid train fan.
Patrick F. Condon, the county attorney for Lancaster, declined to comment.
Although the adolescent denied entering the restricted area and tampering with the switch, the investigator noted in the records that he was aware of the location and operation of the switch.
Court documents indicate that only four minutes prior to the train derailing, authorities had found that a tripod had been erected around the accident scene.
“In the days following the derailment, a video of the derailment was posted to YouTube account ZUnit06, which is believed be associated with [the teen],” according to an investigator in the report. “This account features numerous videos of trains filmed in Bennet, NE and other locations in Lancaster County, NE.”
The investigator said that a video captioned “Loaded BNSF Arbor Collides and Derails In Bennet, NE!” was uploaded on April 23.
