Steve Quayle News Alerts

October 23, 2003
Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Local, state and federal law enforcement officers are searching for a man in a pickup truck who was seen pulling bolts out of the legs of a huge electrical transmission tower near the Sacramento Valley city of Anderson.

"It's my opinion this is a domestic terrorism act by the very nature of what this individual was trying to do," said Anderson Police Chief Neil Purcell. "If all four legs were unhooked from their base and we had any sizable wind velocity, that tower would go over."

Purcell said the apparent vandalism came to light when three electrical engineers drove past the tower on Interstate 5 Monday and spotted a man with a white hard hat crouching beside one of the tower's legs. A silver Toyota pickup truck with Washington plates was parked not far away, he said, a mud- spattered Honda motorcycle strapped to its rear.

Curious, the men left the freeway and doubled back to drive past the man, Purcell said.

"They could see the guy down with what looked like some large ratchet wrenches feverishly working to remove nuts and bolts," Purcell said.

When he spotted the witnesses, the man jumped up, hopped a fence to his truck and sped away toward the interstate, the engineers in pursuit, Purcell said. The man nearly struck two vehicles as he pulled onto the freeway, the chief said, but the engineers were able to follow and call 911 from a mobile phone.

The men gave an Anderson dispatcher the truck's make, direction of travel and license plate, Purcell said. Eventually, the dispatcher became concerned about the civilians in the high-speed pursuit, and told the engineers to end the chase, he said.

"Unfortunately, we didn't come up with the suspect nor did the CHP after that," he said.

Police and officials from Western Area Power Administration, which maintains the tower, inspected the structure and discovered that all of the bolts were missing from one leg and about 3/4 were missing from another -- 13 bolts in all, Purcell said.

The police notified the California Highway Patrol, which in turn notified the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center and the FBI, Purcell said. On Tuesday, he said, Anderson police received a call from police in Klamath Falls, Ore.

"They'd seen our bulletin," he said. "They'd gotten very concerned because about four hours or so before our incident, they saw a very similar incident up there where bolts were taken out and the suspect was seen and the suspect disappeared. Klamath Falls is only 3 1/2 hours away from us."

The man seen in Anderson was white, in his early 60s with long, blackish- gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard and wire-rimmed glasses, about 5-feet-11 and between 220 and 240 pounds, Purcell said.

The man seen in Oregon had the same description, he said, and a similar vehicle. The vehicle seen in Anderson had Washington license plates with the number A36457P, the chief said.

Authorities have not named any suspects but have put out an alert asking police statewide to watch for the truck.

The truck is registered to a Michael Poulin of Spokane, according to Brad Benfield of the Washington state department of licensing. The registration has a "felony vehicle warning," which may indicate it was reported stolen or may indicate it is wanted by law enforcement, he said.

Poulin's ex-wife in Spokane, Marianne Torres, said that the couple divorced in September and that she hadn't seen him since mid-October and didn't know where he was. Sacramento FBI spokeswoman Karen Ernst declined to comment on Poulin. She did not call him a suspect.

"We have not released anybody's name. We have released a description of an individual and a description of a vehicle that was seen in Klamath Falls and Anderson," she said. "Right now, our main goal is to locate the individual,

identify him, and question this individual."

The Anderson tower is part of Western Area Power Administration's 17,000- mile network of wires in 15 states, said spokeswoman LaVerne Kyriss. The federally owned system carries power from federal dams to publicly owned utilities, she said.

Kyriss said a downed tower would not cripple the network, which is designed to survive damage from natural disasters. Nevertheless, she said, the company has stepped up patrols and is considering its options, such as making the tower bolts harder to remove.

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