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Demian Warner / The Newport Daily Express
Police say a man drove a tractor over eight police vehicles Thursday. The damage is estimated to be about $250,000.
A man driving a farm tractor ran over eight vehicles in the parking lot of a Vermont police station in an apparent revenge scheme, according to local reports.
Police said Roger Pion, 34, of Newport, Vt., flattened seven marked police cruisers and one unmarked personal vehicle at the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department in Derby, Vt., around 12:40 p.m. Thursday.
“We came out and sure enough there was someone who had run over our cruisers with a tractor,” Chief Dep. Philip Brooks of the Orleans County Sheriff’s Dept. told WCAX.
Not only were their roofs and hoods caved in, but “the radios are ruined, the radar detectors, the cages in the cars … We’re going to have to get the jaws of life up here to pry the trunks open and see about the rifles and shotguns,” Sheriff Kirk Martin told the Associated Press.
With the vehicles crushed, police had no way to pursue Pion after he drove off in the tractor.
Demian Warner / The Newport Daily Express
Police say Roger Pion took out more than half of the sheriff department's fleet -- some of its newest vehicles were only four months old.
“It felt like I was in a Monster Jam rally or something,” witness Rene Morris told WCAX. “I just couldn’t believe it. He’s backing up, going over it, turns around, makes his way to the other vehicles smashes those up, did his business and headed right down Route 5.”
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Police eventually caught up with Pion a mile and a half from the police station and arrested him. The motive is still under investigation, but witnesses believe Pion was angry about his recent arrest for marijuana possession and resisting arrest.
Stephanie Dasaro / Vermont State Police
Police arrested Roger Pion of Newport, V.T., after the tractor incident. He also was arrested recently for marijuana possession and resisting arrest.
The damage is estimated to be about $250,000, according to police.
No one was injured. At least two deputies had gone inside a few moments before after washing their vehicles, officers said.
Brooks said the destroyed vehicles constituted more than half of the fleet of sheriff’s cruisers in the rural county on the Canadian border. The others were out on patrol. Since the incident, neighboring counties have offered their help.
“We have other county sheriff’s departments who are offering cruisers to us,” Brooks said. “We’ve already had one county that’s dropped one off to us and we’ve got two others that are on the way.”
It’s not known where Pion got the tractor but police said he comes from a farm family.
Demian Warne / The Newport Daily Express
Police don't know where Pion got the tractor from but say he comes from a farm family.
Pion was held at the Northern State Correctional Center in Newport in lieu of $15,000 bail.
He is expected to appear in Orleans County Criminal Court Friday to answer to seven counts of felony unlawful mischief, one count of misdemeanor unlawful mischief, one count of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, one count of gross negligent operation, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident.
A man driving a tractor crushes 7 police vehicles parked at a sheriff's department headquarters in Vermont. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
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Leave a Comment:
to bad no cops where smashed with the cars
Your post reveals your ignorance. It's "too bad".
yea man... it's all fun and games until someone loses a guy...
This is not funny. IT'S HILARIOUS!!!!
He should have brought the manure spreader with him because he's in deep doo-doo now!
If they legalized marijuana, the revenue would pay for twice that many vehicles in one week or less.
15,000 dollar bail for 250,000 dollars worth of damage? Makes sense to me! Make sense to you?!?
sure does...i mean..how far away can he get... the tractor only goes 15 mph
lets see, Taxpayer dollars waisted enforcing laws against the legalization of marijuana that the majority of Americans feel should be taken off the books or taxpayer dollars to replace the equipment destroyed by this farmer for the method he chose to protest how these laws are outdated and should be repealed. These laws were based on false and made up asumptions by legislators as a means to crack down on Mexican and South American immigrants.
My vote is for the farmer and his method of protest. This should happen more often.
He looks ALMOST smart enough to know he did wrong!~!!!!!!
I think you give him too much credit. He looks dumb as owl sh*t. But, if cannabis were legal then six cops wouldn't be walking the beat today.
I'm thinking that if this individual is aged 34 years and is the same person in the booking photo (and there's no reason to think they have the wrong image), it looks like he's using/abusing more than cannabis. He looks like a poster child for the anti-meth campaign.
Hell, I ain't pretty. I'm 38, smoke (tobacco & other), imbibe often, and I still look 20 years younger than this miscreant.
Pot will not make you want to get in your farm implement & drive over some police cruisers. It will, however, make you want to sit on the couch with a bag of Gardetto's & watch the Olympics. Meth, on the other hand, is a far more psychoactive agent and will cause delusions and paranoia. As such, if you think the police are out to get you, meth-induced psychosis may cause one to think that monster-trucking some cop cars is an acceptable response.
need more laws on tractor owner operater - maybe a concealed tractor permit OR just limit the size of tractor thats legal, make it small enough so it couldnt do any damage.
Yeah, but it's hard to plow a field in a lawnmower.
OHHH no ...next thing those dam dems will want to do is ban tractors.
Only if the cops had been setting in the cars eating donuts.
i would say it's hard to do anything 'in' a lawn mower... 'with' a lawn mower, if i may quote princess jasmine would be ' a whole new wooooorld'
Looks like we need stricter tractor laws. Screw that, just ban tractors! They are too dangerous for the general population to handle.
BAHAHAHAHA... This guy is awesome!
I wish it was caught on video camera. It would be like the Blues Brothers..one of my favorite movies.
Hypocrisy=pot laws in USA
Pot=medicine
Alcohol & Tobacco=poison
Good Job!!!
yeah if this dude was smart he could have filmed it from the cab view, posted it online and raised his bail $ before the sun set.....
sure glad this dude was not in his tractor stuck in the long line of cars in the drive thru lanes at Chick-Filet Wednesday!
tractor cam!
Maybe we can send him to the White House seems he can create more jobs than Obama.
good idea...do you think they would trust him with the job of mowing the white house lawn with that tractor?
gotta love tractors..real american transportation!
Heck I'd put him in the oval office...got to be better than the doper-smoker-gay clown that is there now!
agreed..and on friday nights they can have tractor pulling contests on the front white house lawn..all citizens welcome....doesn't get more American than that!
Hey Beanne -as opposed to the coker-joker deficit-choker that was his predecessor?
I love it!! who cares about the tax dollars we already pay em anyhow at least this was worth the cash
By God that's the way to show em homey!!!! When he pays his dues and gets out I bet they'll think twice before phuckin with him again. Where's all the anti's at screaming to ban tractors?
i assumed everyone was being sarcastic...
I highly doubt that.
Good! All real patriots hate the fascists our US police have become. Crush all their death mobiles.
And people say weed makes you do weird things, this is what happens when you take someones weed away!
If he were baked, they would not have 8 smashed cruisers!!
Ya, he was so high he didn't realize the ground there is too hard to plaw..
he would've thought about it.... and thought about it... and thought about it.. and...huh?
This guys deserves a proclamation and the key to the city, maybe even a parade in his honor. There is more tax payer revenue spent ineffectively and misdirected on the "war on drugs" in this country than need be, and could decidedly be put to more practical use. I wonder if he'll be taking this show on the road? I could think of a few more municipal police departments around the country he could visit with his tractor. Sure would make them sit up and take notice, wouldn't it? Stop harassing users and/or growers for personal consumption. Legalize marijuana. It is time. Everyone would be a lot better off, trust that.
Cool...just another reason to legalize pot...to keep guys like this on the couch watching "Big Time Wrestling" and off tractors..besides, the ground there is too hard to plow..
I bet the gas peddle on the tractor got stuck ! perhaps it was a Toyota !
Maybe this is what they were referring to when they said the economy is getting "revved" up this month. Cause they sure could not have been talking about America's economy who's unemployment rate went up along with an anemic job creation number.
now... thats something to brag about! scarface, bugsy ,Al capone and all the fellas have NOTHING against this angry farmer! LOL, the couldnt chase him becasuse they had no cars! LOL, how did they caught up with him? in scooters? bycicles? LOL, this guy ought to be a hero, not everybodyhas this kind og guts to stand for ur stash! can we set up a fund for this guy? I'd love to see him free ASAP and see the reaction of the smurfs next time they see him on the street, Im sure they gonna be llokingthe other way
Too funny!!! I'm jealous!!! Been wanting to do this for years... mostly in heavy traffic during drive-time to work on the expressway.