Tampering with railroad tracks is something they really frown on in Ohio, especially since that huge toxic disaster in February. A Cleveland resident is reportedly in custody and charged with federal domestic terrorism charges. Whether those stick is a different story. There seems to be a mental capacity issue involved.
Sabotaging the tracks
Joseph Findley allegedly tampered with local tracks in an attempt “to cause derailments by freight and Amtrak passenger trains.” The feds know for sure that the 43-year-old, who lives with his mom, jammed “various metal objects into the tracks and rail switches.”
That isn’t nice and he obviously never thought what a massive train crash could do to the neighborhood. Or else, he simply didn’t care.
FBI agents filled out a mountain of affidavits to be used in federal court. From those, the public knows that “Findley lives with his parents” in “Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood.” The tracks he allegedly sabotaged are part of the CSX rail network.
Cleveland, Ohio: FBI agents on Friday arrested a Cleveland man on federal charges that accuse him of trying to cause a train derailment by wedging metal and spikes on tracks and track switches used mostly by Amtrak’s commuter line.
Joseph Findley, 43, is charged in federal court… pic.twitter.com/TlC7wAfXo5
— ᖇᗝᗝᔕᗴᐯᗴᒪ丅 丅ᗴᖇᖇᎥᗴᖇᔕ (@RTerriers) October 8, 2023
His mom stands fully behind her boy. On Monday, October 9, she told local reporters “he’s never been a bad kid, never, he was always good. He’s no terrorist, somebody’s making that up.” Surveillance videos don’t lie.
The FBI started their investigation back in August. That’s “when CSX employees reported that their train struck objects that had been wedged into a switch on the tracks near East 55th Street and Dominion Energy.”
Whatever was jammed into the switch “caused some of the wheels on the train to derail, but eventually they fell back into place.” That was a close one.
A different angle
When the bureau first hit the scene, the first thing they did was check with Dominion Energy to see if their security had any clues.
The place is loaded with surveillance cameras but not a single one of them showed the tracks. They didn’t mind adjusting a few of the cameras. It didn’t take long before they hit pay dirt.
Between the start of their probe in August and October 1, they captured several “images of a bald man in shorts and a black shirt placing items on the tracks.” There were a total of five such incidents in that span.
BREAKING! Cleveland, Ohio: FBI agents on Friday arrested a Cleveland man on federal charges that accuse him of trying to cause a train derailment by wedging metal and spikes on tracks and track switches used mostly by Amtrak’s commuter line.
Joseph Findley, 43, is charged in…
— MAGA COUNTRY ???????????? (@lefthas0class) October 7, 2023
Once they had some images to work with, agents spread out through the neighborhood. When an employee at a “nearby business” identified Joseph Findley, the bureau got a warrant and searched the family home. That happened Friday, October 6.
While they were putting him in cuffs he admitted “that he had placed rail spikes on the tracks, but denied he intended to cause trains to derail.” He certainly wasn’t expecting to flatten them like coins. After they hauled her son away, Mrs. Findley explained to the press, she thinks she understands why he did it.
“Being depressed, because he lost his job, he lost his girlfriend, but he never did anything like that.” She’s not happy with the Feds. “They’re nuts, he’s not a terrorist. I think they all exaggerated it because he never did anything bad.“
