Something tells me that every night for these two might be a slow one.
In an effort to make sure that they would have a slow night on the job at Wendy’s, Ryan Boria and Amy Schaner hatched themselves one heckuva plan. According to police, the logic went that if the two could find a way to prevent customers from coming to the restaurant, they could rest easy and get paid for it. But how were they going to do that? You can’t just put up a sign that says “do us a solid and eat somewhere else, we’re lazy today.” So one or both of them came up with the bright idea of stopping traffic. That, police say, was accomplished by tampering with some nearby railroad tracks. Makes sense, I suppose. Dead people have no need for hamburgers.
Police said they arrested Ryan Boria, 34, of Tilden Township, on charges of causing or risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, and reckless endangerment after surveillance cameras captured images of him messing with the train tracks near the Industrial Drive crossing on the evening of Friday, Aug. 26.
“There was another person involved that worked with him at Wendy’s by the name of Amy Schaner,” Cataldi explained. “They discussed putting a shunt on the tracks on their way to work.”
Why did they do it?
They told police they wanted their shift at the fast-food restaurant to go slow.
“During the interview, they told us that their intentions were that if the gates could malfunction and they could somehow block traffic, then that would prevent people from getting to Wendy’s, and they could have a slow night at work,” Cataldi said.Police said Boria placed a makeshift device on the tracks that messed with the signal sensors, which meant the gates wouldn’t have gone down when a train approached the crossing, and a crash could have happened.
“Their dispatch center would not have determined that the signal was being disrupted,” explained Cataldi. “A crash could have absolutely occurred.”
There haven’t been any updates in the year since this happened, but at the time, the regular police, the railroad police and the FBI were all said to be involved in the investigation. The plan was to look into whether there was another, more sinister motive for the crime. Police explained that if it was found that terrorism was involved, there could be a jail sentence of up to 20 years. Or to put it another way, a lot of slow nights.