SALINE COUNTY, Ark. —Vandalism at a construction site on the Southwest Trail in Saline County left a mess of broken equipment and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Chris Meyer, the president of James A. Rogers Excavating, said the company is doing the construction of this section of the trail.
“This is how we provide and put food on our tables,” Meyer said. “Take me out of the equation, you hurt the employees, you hurt the family that runs this thing, the men and women who work every single day.”
Equipment, such as a bulldozer and trackhoe, was vandalized over the weekend, leaving it broken and mangled.
“There was so much malicious and vicious intent to not only hurt our equipment, but there was people’s homes that could’ve been flooded because of this,” Meyer said.
Meyer said that when he first saw the damage, he was speechless. His company started pulling equipment out in time. Otherwise, a nearby creek could have flooded because the damage caused a dam in the creek.
“There was a John Deere 210 trackhoe that was pretty much buried and almost unrecognizable,” Meyer said.
Recent rainfall has made the situation worse, forcing the company to wait for the creek to recede before they could retrieve the rest of the equipment. The damage comes with a hefty price tag.
“There’s probably about $500,000 to equipment, $50,000 to $100,000 in environmental cost, and about three weeks of work that we’re all going to have to redo,” Meyer said.
He believes whoever did this probably had a key and a code to access the equipment. Community support is coming in strong, with local businesses and construction companies from neighboring states donating money to raise a reward.
“It’s truly a testament to the industry in general, for everybody to have each other’s back,” Meyer said. “This was completely uncalled for, and this was taken way too far.”
The reward for information that leads to a conviction currently sits at $61,660. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Saline County Sheriff’s Office at 501-303-5609.