$50K bail for Vt. man accused of crushing cop cars

NEWPORT, Vt. (AP) — A Ver­mont man who author­i­ties said used a large farm trac­tor like a mon­ster truck and drove over seven police vehi­cles, then tried to run over two offi­cers who pur­sued him, was ordered held on $50,000 bail Friday.

Orleans County sher­iffs said Roger Pion, 34, of New­port, was angry over a recent arrest for resist­ing arrest and mar­i­juana pos­ses­sion when he drove the trac­tor into the park­ing lot of the sheriff’s depart­ment and rolled it mul­ti­ple times across cruis­ers and a trans­port van parked in the lot. No one was injured in Thursday’s incident.

Sworn police state­ments filed at the court said Pion would face 14 charges. The most seri­ous one, felony aggra­vated assault on a police offi­cer, car­ries a penalty of up to 16 years in prison.

Sher­iffs said that after Pion left their lot, they were unable to pur­sue him because they had no intact vehi­cles. When two New­port City offi­cers chased him, he sud­denly started back­ing the trac­tor toward them.

“I backed up in fear of our safety about ten to fif­teen feet before bump­ing into another vehi­cle,” wrote New­port Offi­cer Tan­ner Jacobs, adding that “at this point the trac­tor was still back­ing up.” He said he and his part­ner then left their vehi­cle to avoid get­ting run over.

Con­verg­ing city and state police and county sher­iffs then sur­rounded Pion and ordered him from the trac­tor at gun­point. He was found to be car­ry­ing a loaded pis­tol, author­i­ties said. Sheriff’s deputies got there in a bor­rowed civil­ian vehicle.

Defense attor­ney David Sleigh said he would seek to have the aggra­vated assault charge dismissed.

“There was no actual con­tact. He never came into threat­en­ing prox­im­ity of any­one,” Sleigh said. “I under­stand if these deputies were annoyed, and there may be a per­sonal mea­sure of ret­ri­bu­tion” reflected in the aggra­vated assault charge. “But that does not equate to proof.”

After Pion’s court appear­ance Fri­day, sheriff’s deputies and fire and res­cue crews in neigh­bor­ing Derby, where the sheriff’s depart­ment is located, were try­ing to sal­vage what they could from the crushed cruis­ers. They were using tools usu­ally used to extract crash vic­tims from crushed vehi­cles to pry open the cruis­ers’ trunks.

Chief Deputy Philip Brooks mar­veled that the rifle, shot­gun and other items stored in his cruiser’s trunk were unharmed. “Even my hat held its shape,” he said.

Brooks said the depart­ment moved into the for­mer bank build­ing in Decem­ber. There was no video sur­veil­lance of the ungated park­ing lot. “I’m cer­tain the secu­rity issues will be revis­ited,” he said.

Sev­eral other sher­iffs’ depart­ments around Ver­mont offered to lend cruis­ers to Orleans County. State police offered cars they were prepar­ing for auction.

Sher­iff Kirk Mar­tin said in an inter­view at the county cour­t­house that he was in Boston, prepar­ing to attend a Red Sox game on Law Enforce­ment Appre­ci­a­tion Day at Fen­way Park, when he got word of the vehic­u­lar car­nage back home. He hur­ried back north, with New Hamp­shire and Ver­mont State Police escort­ing him.

Mar­tin missed the game, in which Boston lost to the Min­nesota Twins, 5–0. “Even watch­ing them lose yes­ter­day would have been bet­ter” than what he came home to, he said.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.