http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4806557.html
Big wheels, young boys and trouble
David Chanen, Star Tribune
June 2, 2004 DAMAGE0602
One can only imagine what goes on in the minds of 10-year-old boys. It's a Sunday afternoon. You somehow get into a fenced construction site filled with big cranes and bulldozers. You manage to find some ignition keys, hop up on the seat, start the engine and away you go.
You knock out power to a radio station, seriously damage construction equipment and level a trailer. Your day ends in the back of a squad car.
To the two 10-year-olds, it may have seemed like a romp in a giant sandbox full of toys. But, Minneapolis police say, that romp did more than $500,000 of damage at the Heritage Park housing development near Hwy. 55 and Lyndale Av. N.
Police say one of the boys drove several hundred feet in a 100,000-pound excavator during the demolition derby.
The boys, who live within blocks of the site, snapped a power pole in half, knocking out power to KMOJ-FM radio for 17 hours. They confessed to police after they were arrested Sunday evening. The boys, who won't be identified because they aren't adults, can be charged with a felony-level crime in Juvenile Court.
Police told RC Williams, operations manager for KMOJ, that the damage will exceed $500,000. When police arrived at the scene, they asked Williams if the destruction had been caused by a storm.
"I don't think the kids realize the magnitude of what they did, but they will soon enough," Williams said. "The cab of the equipment they were driving was crushed in. I'm amazed they got out without being hurt. It was an ugly scene."
Police initially responded Sunday afternoon to a report of a downed power line in the Heritage Park development at Girard Terrace and 5th Av. N. Officers found extensive property damage, including overturned construction equipment. A dump truck and a large crane were stuck in deep mud with their lights on, police said.
A short time later, the two boys were found rummaging through the van of a KMOJ employee in the station's parking lot, which is about 1,000 feet from the construction site. The van owner hung on to one of the boys and the other was caught a few blocks away, said Police Department spokesman Ron Reier.
One of the boys had several sets of keys with him, but it was unclear whether the keys had been left in the construction equipment or in a construction trailer, Reier said. A witness told police about seeing the boys do damage and one of the boys made a spontaneous statement to officers of "his knowledge of the massive vandalism," Reier said.
The boys couldn't be prosecuted if they were younger than 10, according to state law, said Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar. Police may refer the case to child protection if necessary. Any charges and the outcome of the case will not be made public because of the boys' age, Klobuchar said.
A track backhoe and a bulldozer rented by the city of Minneapolis were among the equipment vandalized between 3 and 6 p.m. Sunday. The backhoe has a broken windshield that will cost about $500 to fix and the bulldozer had "quite a bit of damage," said Steve Kotke, director of property and equipment services for the city.
"This is heavy equipment," he said. "There are lots of levers, switches and pedals. I'm just surprised they could even operate any of it."
There is a chain-link fence around the construction site and some nearby streets are blocked off, but "it's not Fort Knox," said Bart Anderson, vice president of Veit & Co. Inc., which had five pieces of equipment damaged.
Anderson believes the boys got on a large excavator and "just started pounding on things." The excavator didn't belong to Veit, but there were various levels of damage to a 50-ton crane, an all-terrain forklift, a construction trailer and job box owned by the company.
"This will cost us many thousands of dollars," Anderson said. "Everything is replaceable. Fortunately, nobody got hurt."
While the vandalism won't put construction behind schedule, KMOJ's Williams said he is still calculating how much revenue his radio station lost by being off the air for 17 hours. Repair crews worked through the night to restore power by 8:30 a.m. Monday.
The community station was to do heavy on-air promotion of the '80s funk band Dazz Band concert at the Escape Ultra Lounge on Sunday just a few hours before the lights went out.
"I don't know who these boys were," he said. "But kids hang out and they see the construction equipment. It looks pretty inviting."
Two 10-yr-olds do over $500,000 damage at construction site...
