Court Opinion

ID: 9506854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:14:37.566004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:09.597358
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE CASTLES
(dissenting) :
I dissent.
*126The following facts were known at the time of the arrest:
1. An employee of the Concentrator saw the engine going through a switch. It then sped up and darted out of the yards.
2. This employee saw two men inside the engine compartment. These men could not be identified.
3. It was determined that only certain people who had a working knowledge of how the engine ran, could have activated the engine. They would have had to have knowledge of how to uncouple the cars, put the bus bar in, release the air, activate the switch from within the engine, and several other steps.
4. Other employees attempted to intercept or follow the engine. These employees, as they left the Concentrator yards, noticed an automobile belonging to the Defendant Fetters parked alongside the road just outside a fence that surrounds the Concentrator.
5. These two employees, upon their return to the Concentrator around 8:45 p.m., found that Fetters’ automobile was gone.
6. At approximately 8:45 p.m. defendants came into the Race Track Bar which is located three blocks from where the ear was seen. Mr. Lean asked the bartender for some salve and stated that Mr. Fetters had burned himself.
7. That two sets of footprints, which were made in the snow, were discovered. These footprints led from the automobile which was parked on Continental Drive to a fence which surrounds the Concentrator, and then to the area where the engine was parked.
8. That both defendants were employees of the Anaconda Company and were employed at the Concentrator. Both defendants were scheduled to work the afternoon shift on the day in question; that one of the defendants reported off for that day and the other defendant dumped a shift; that both defendants had personal knowledge of how to run this particular engine; that defendant Fetters was scheduled to operate the engine that afternoon; that both defendants knew exactly *127what tíme the employees left for lunch on the afternoon shift; that both defendants knew where the engine was left during the lunch period and how the engine was secured during this period; that both defendants were positively identified as being in the Eace Track Bar which is approximately two or three blocks .at a time approximately 45 minutes after the theft.
Taken together, all of these factors establish in my opinion probable cause for the arrest on reasonable grounds.
I would reverse the trial judge.