(Boone Today posted the following story by Chuck Hackenmiller on its website on June 10.)
BOONE, Iowa — Two engineering students at Iowa State University originally charged with railroad vandalism in an April 3 incident near Boone both received district court sentences on charges of criminal trespassing.
Nathan W. Delzell, 22, Ames, and Heath B. Delzell, 20, also of Ames, were first charged with railroad vandalism in the third degree. Those charges were amended May 13 to a simple misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass.
On the day of the incident, Union Pacific officials informed the Boone County Sheriff’s Office that there were trespassers near the Kate Shelley High Bridge. Deputies and railroad personnel found metal bars placed on the railroad tracks in at least four areas, up to 500 feet apart, with none of the metal bars found on the high bridge. Concerns were that the metal bars could have derailed a train.
The sheriff’s department arrested the Delzells and charged them with railroad vandalism and trespassing.
All trains in the area were stopped for about an hour while law enforcement and Union Pacific railroad personnel walked up and down the tracks to find the metal objects.
Boone County County Attorney Jim Robbins explained the amended charge in a court document statement.
He stated that to prove the railroad vandalism charge, it is necessary that damage exceed $10,000. “If damage is less than $10,000, the charge is a lesser offense,” he said.
He said the property damage was only the cost to replace, repair or restore. He concluded that there was no destruction of property, so no damage amount can be established. “In this case, the damage is the stoppage of other trains traveling on the railroad tracks and the resultant loss of income and costs associated with that stoppage,” according to Robbins.
Robbins said the railroad vandalism charge is a specific intent crime that would require the state of Iowa to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to damage, deface, alter or destroy property rather than merely intending to do the act which damaged the property.
Robbins said the defendants committed “a very stupid and potentially dangerous act, but such was not done with the specific intent to damage.”
“The state would be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant’s specific intent in this matter,” Robbins stated.
Tuesday, both Delzells were fined $100 apiece, plus court surcharge and court costs for the incident.