I agree. Why is it the bank's fault he got himself into something he can't handle?
PS, I imagine he's going to jail. It wasn't his property to destroy.
Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure
by purplesofa 25 Replies latest jw friends
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Feel sorry for the house.
Banks shouldn't have loaned the money.
People shouldn't have taken the loans.
Yet the houses suffer.
WHY GOD? WHY?
-a non-rhyming poem by B the X
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AllTimeJeff
Nice prose Billy.
I get what he was trying to do. To bad its illegal. In jail, he will get to know a new kind of bulldozer, and thats all I am sayin.
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villabolo
JeffT: "I agree. Why is it the bank's fault he got himself into something he can't handle?"
I can't speak to the details of this individual's case but I will comment on the general suffering of those who have been trapped into similar situations.
They were bamboozled by predatory loan sharks who could read the fine print (and keep quiet about it) much better than the recipients of the loans who did not know what they were getting into. It is arrogant and self righteous to assume that everyone could do the math and figure out that they weren't going to cut it. The banks themselves who made the loans didn't know what they were doing which is why they started collapsing.
villabolo
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AllTimeJeff
The banks themselves who made the loans didn't know what they were doing which is why they started collapsing.
I don't know if I agree with this. The banks are businesses, loans are products, and they sold as many as they could to make their numbers. It's all about the business.
However, common sense flew out the window. I recall one couple who bought a house in 2003 or so. They couldn't afford it, had no money for a down payment, and we all asked them how they did it. They said it was easy. I agree, they were preyed upon, but they had a lot of people tell them that it sounded like a suspicious loan if they could get one. They took offense to this.
They filed for bankruptcy a year later.
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JeffT
Villabolo, I don't buy it, plain and simple. He owned a business and commercial property. He was clearly in a position to understand loan documents on a house.
Edited to add: the IRS had liens against him and his business. I think this guy has an issue with paying what he owes.
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BurnTheShips
Marvin John Heemeyer (October 28, 1951 – June 4, 2004) was a welder and an automobile muffler repair shop owner. Angered over the outcome of a zoning dispute, he armored a Komatsu D355A bulldozer with layers of steel and concrete and used it on June 4, 2004, to demolish the town hall, a former judge's home, and other buildings in Granby, Colorado. The rampage ended when the bulldozer became immobilized. After a standoff with law enforcement agencies, Heemeyer committed suicide by gunshot.
Heemeyer had been feuding with Granby officials, particularly over fines for violating city ordinances and a zoning dispute regarding a concrete factory constructed opposite to his muffler shop that he believed caused his business to fail. [ 1 ]
Soon, Heemeyer leased his business to a trash company and sold the property several months prior to the rampage. The new owners gave Heemeyer six months to leave, and it was apparently during this time that he began modifying his bulldozer. [citation needed]
Heemeyer had bought a bulldozer two years before the incident with the intention of using it to build an alternative route to his muffler shop, but city officials rejected his request to build the road. Heemeyer complained the concrete plant dropped dust on his business, and also blocked access to his business. [citation needed]
Notes found by investigators after the rampage indicate that the primary motivation for Heemeyer's bulldozer rampage was his fight to stop a concrete plant from being built near his shop. The notes indicated Heemeyer held grudges over the zoning approval. "I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable", Heemeyer wrote. "Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things." [ 7 ]
Heemeyer took about a year and a half to prepare for his rampage. In notes found by investigators after the incident, Heemeyer wrote: "It's interesting how I never got caught. This was a part-time project over a 1½ year time period." Heemeyer was surprised that several men who had visited the shed last autumn did not discover the modified bulldozer, "especially with the 2,000 lb (910 kg). lift fully exposed". "Somehow their vision was clouded", he wrote. [ 7 ]
The machine used in the incident was a Komatsu D355A bulldozer [ 8 ] fitted with makeshift armor plating covering the cabin, engine and parts of the tracks. In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor. This made the machine impervious to small arms fire and resistant to explosives; three external explosions and over 200 rounds of firearm ammunition fired at the bulldozer had no effect on it. [ 1 ] National Guard units were placed on standby orders by Governor Bill Owens for possible anti-armor support. [ 9 ]
For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard. The cameras were protected on the outside by 3-inch shields of bullet-resistant plastic. [ 1 ] Onboard fans and an air conditioner were used to keep Heemeyer cool while driving and compressed air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. Food, water and life support were present in the almost airtight cabin. Heemeyer had no intention of ever leaving the cabin once he entered; the hatch was permanently sealed. [ 1 ] Authorities speculated Heemeyer may have used a homemade crane found in his garage to lower the armor hull over the dozer and himself. "Once he tipped that lid shut, he knew he wasn't getting out", Daly said. Investigators searched the garage where they believe Heemeyer built the vehicle and found cement, armor and steel. [ 1 ]
For armament the bulldozer was fitted with a .50 caliber semi-automatic Barrett M82 rifle pointing out to the rear, a semi-auto variant of the FN FNC in front, a .223 Ruger Mini-14 to the right, a 9mm Kel-Tec P-11 semi-auto pistol and a .357 magnum revolverwith which he killed himself. [citation needed]
Afterwards, the modified bulldozer came to be known as "Killdozer", although only Heemeyer was killed in the incident. [ 10 ]
On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer drove his armored bulldozer through the wall of his former business, the concrete plant, the Town Hall, the office of the local newspaper that editorialized against him, the home of a former judge's widow, and a hardware store owned by another man Heemeyer named in a lawsuit, as well as others. Owners of all the buildings that were damaged had some connection to Heemeyer's disputes. [ 11 ]
Heemeyer's rampage resulted in 13 buildings destroyed, [ 8 ] resulting in total damages estimated at more than $7 million. [ 12 ] The bulldozer also knocked out natural gas service to City Hall and the cement plant, and damaged a truck and part of a utility service center. [ 13 ] Despite the great damage to property, no one besides Heemeyer was killed. [ 1 ]
According to Grand County commissioner James Newberry, Grand County emergency dispatchers used the reverse 911 emergency system to notify many residents and property owners of the rampage going on in the town. [ 3 ] Thus, many people were forewarned and were able to get out of harm's way. [citation needed]
Defenders of Heemeyer contended that he made a point of not hurting anybody during his bulldozer rampage; [ 1 ] Ian Daugherty, a bakery owner, said Heemeyer "went out of his way" not to harm anyone. Others offered different views. The sheriff's department argues that the fact that no one was injured was due more to luck than intent. Heemeyer had installed two rifles in firing ports on the inside of the bulldozer, [ 14 ] and fired 15 bullets from his rifle at power transformers and propane tanks. "Had these tanks ruptured and exploded, anyone within one-half mile of the explosion could have been endangered", the sheriff's department said; within this range were 12 police officers and residents of a senior citizens complex. [ 5 ] The sheriff's department also asserted Heemeyer fired many bullets from his semi-automatic rifle at Cody Docheff when Docheff tried to stop the assault on his concrete batch plant by using a front-end loader. Later, Heemeyer fired on two state troopers before they had fired at him. [ 5 ] The sheriff's department also notes that 11 of the 13 buildings Heemeyer bulldozed were occupied until moments before their destruction. At the town library, for example, a children's program was in progress when the incident began. [ 5 ] There might have been casualties if local emergency response hadn't worked so effectively. [ 2 ]
One officer dropped a flash-bang grenade down the bulldozer's exhaust pipe, with no immediate apparent effect. Local and state police, including a SWAT team, walked behind and beside the bulldozer occasionally firing, but the armored bulldozer was impervious to their shots. Attempts to disable the bulldozer's cameras with gunfire failed as the bullets were unable to penetrate the thick 3-inch bullet-resistant plastic. At one point during the rampage, Undersheriff Glenn Trainor managed to climb atop the bulldozer and rode the bulldozer "like a bronc-buster, trying to figure out a way to get a bullet inside the dragon". [ 2 ] However, he was eventually forced to jump off to avoid being hit with debris. Further attempts to mount the bulldozer were hampered due to oil that Heemeyer had spread on the vehicle to hinder such attempts. [ 2 ]
Two things conspired against Heemeyer as he reduced the Gambles hardware store to rubble. The radiator of the dozer had been damaged and the engine was leaking various fluids, and Gambles had a small basement. The bulldozer's engine failed and Heemeyer dropped one tread into the basement and couldn't get out. The bulldozer became stuck. About a minute later, one of the SWAT team members who had swarmed around the machine reported hearing a single gunshot from inside the sealed cab. Heemeyer had shot himself. [ 1 ] The coroner stated that Heemeyer used his .357-caliber handgun in the suicide. [citation needed]
Before this happened, the police department was making a call to a local Army National Guard base, asking for support from one of the base's AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to fire a Hellfire missile at the bulldozer, ensuring the destruction of the vehicle despite collateral damage. The reasoning behind such was the officers believed that Heemeyer would have caused more damage than the missile strike would have had he not been stopped. By the time they were making the call however Heemeyer had already committed suicide.
Heemeyer's body was subsequently removed by police with a crane, though it took twelve hours for them to cut through the hatch with an oxyacetylene cutting torch. [citation needed]
Fate of the bulldozer
On April 19, 2005, it was announced that Heemeyer's bulldozer was being taken apart for scrap metal. [ 8 ] It was planned that individual pieces would be dispersed to many separate scrap yards to prevent admirers of Heemeyer from taking souvenirs. [ 8 ]
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villabolo
Now that's what I call a revolutionary. Thought of everything in advance.
villabolo
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BurnTheShips
Pretty well planned. It could have been done better though.
BTS
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villabolo
AllTimeJeff:
"I don't know if I agree with this. The banks are businesses, loans are products, and they sold as many as they could to make their numbers. It's all about the business."
Jeff, I thought it was in the news why the banks failed. Layer after layer of toxic assets based on loans that should never have been made.
"However, common sense flew out the window. I recall one couple who bought a house in 2003 or so. They couldn't afford it, had no money for a down payment, and we all asked them how they did it. They said it was easy. I agree, they were preyed upon, but they had a lot of people tell them that it sounded like a suspicious loan if they could get one. They took offense to this."
Jeff, I too warned two persons who worked in my place of employment not to take such loans. One was a Mexican lady who could barely speak any English and another was a young lady from El Salvador whose family had recently come to the US. The Mexican lady was making $10 an hour as was the other young lady whose whole family was approved. There is no such thing as common sense.
villabolo