TOWER— A press statement released Wednesday by the Breitung Police Department appears to dismiss suggestions of sabotage to one of the city’s two ambulances. At the same time, the release blames a dead battery on the city’s main fire engine on “operator error,” but does not explain how the department came to such a conclusion or why it was the subject of investigation. The dead battery was not reported to Breitung police as possible sabotage.
The press statement does not address the primary evidence in support of sabotage, namely that a power strip that’s attached nearly eight feet up on a wall to the fire hall was switched off sometime between Monday and Tuesday, April 28 and 29.
As the Timberjay previously reported, fire department staff had addressed the dead battery on Monday, April 28, finding that the circuit breaker that powered the truck’s automatic charger and air compressor had been tripped. Fire officials did not report that incident to law enforcement since there was no evidence of sabotage at that time. Fire department staff reset the breaker, which restored charging and restarted the air compressor.
But the following day, when interim ambulance director Dena Suikhonen spotted what appeared to be blood inside one of the city’s ambulances, she did contact Breitung police as well as Fire Chief Paige Olson.
When Olson responded, she said she was able to start the primary engine but noticed that the air compressor was no longer operating. City maintenance staff came to the scene as well and that’s when maintenance assistant John Harju noticed that the power strip had been turned off. The strip is not easily accessible, and it would have been very difficult for anyone to have turned it off accidentally.
Contrary to the Breitung police report, the fire engine battery was not reported to be dead on Tuesday, when they arrived at the scene, since Chief Olson was able to start the vehicle.
The Breitung police report that they did submit samples of the possible blood found at the scene for analysis. No results have been reported to date.
Breitung police did not respond to emailed questions seeking clarification of some of its conclusions as of presstime.