Man is charged in Taneytown crash
A Taneytown man who ran his pickup truck into City Hall on Friday after having his water service cut off, according to officials, has been arrested and charged with multiple offenses.
Rodney Wayne Davis, 55, of the unit block of Crimson Avenue, is charged with one count of second-degree burglary, a felony, and one count each of seconddegree assault, malicious destruction scheme of $1,000 in value or more, malicious destruction of property of $1,000 in value or more, and reckless endangerment, according to electronic court records.
Taneytown police arrested Davis at 5:47 p.m. when they arrived at the municipal office at 17 E. Baltimore St. and found Davis’ blue Dodge Dakota pickup “halfway into the city office” and Davis still in the driver’s seat, according to charging documents. Multiple witnesses and video footage indicated Davis had driven into the front of the building and backed up to ram it again five times.
“City Hall suffered substantial damage. The entire waiting area and front office are completely destroyed,” Taneytown Mayor Bradley Wantz told the “We are locating city employees in other city facilities as space is available. Our employees from the front office will be working out of the police department because we do have some offices there they can use.”
The mayor and council workshop meeting scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday will be held in the large meeting room on the second floor of the Taneytown Volunteer Fire Company at 39 E. Baltimore St., rather than the city office building. Wantz published a statement on the incident Saturday, calling it “nothing less than a terroristic attack,” and noting that Davis could have seriously injured people had they been present in the office at the time he drove into the building. At that time, Wantz wrote that he could not address Davis’ motive, but he did in a Tuesday interview.
“The instigating factor was that his water had been shut off by the city,” Wantz said. “That comes down to kind of a personal matter between he and the city and I can’t speak to what resolution has been reached in that matter.”
According to charging documents, Taneytown Councilman Joe Vigliotti was one of the witnesses not to the incident itself, but to the circumstances that allegedly lead Davis to do what he did. A family member of Davis’ was speaking on the phone with Vigliotti at about 5:45 p.m Friday when Davis allegedly joined the conversation to say that he had “had it and that he was going to f——-g crash into the office and that he was going to go down to the police department and give them a surprise,” according to the documents.
Vigliotti called Taneytown police after the call with Davis, at about 5:50 p.m., but the charging documents note police were being informed that Davis had already crashed his truck around that time.
Davis was arrested on the scene and taken to Carroll County Detention Center, but was released Saturday after posting $250 of a $2,500 bail, according to electronic court records. He is due in Carroll County District Court on Sept. 26 for a preliminary hearing. A call placed to the home phone number on record for Davis was not returned by 6 p.m. Tuesday.
The city had already been discussing improved security for city employees in the wake of incidents like the May shooting rampage at a municipal building in Virginia Beach that left 12 people dead, according to Wantz. Friday’s incident will push those talks to the forefront, he said.
Times Tuesday.