worker arrested and ordered to undergo psycho testing!
for “vandalizing” a chinook. sheehs!
A federal judge today ordered a $19-an-hour Boeing Co. assembly-line worker to undergo psychiatric testing after authorities arrested him and accused him of vandalizing a $30 million Chinook helicopter being built for the Army.
Matthew Kevin Montgomery’s appearance in U.S. District Court today came as federal authorities announced they had arrested the Trevose man and accused him of slashing wires on a nearly completed combat helicopter this month.
The discovery of damage to two Chinooks shut down production last week at Boeing’s Ridley Township line and prompted the U.S. Defense Department to launch a criminal probe into what caused the irregularities during the final phase of production of the dual-rotor helicopters.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said Montgomery, a Boeing employee for 18 months, admitted to Defense Criminal Investigative Service agents last night that he was the one who had hacked into a fire-hose-thick bundle of wires on one of two CH-47F copters on the eight-chopper assembly line.
Montgomery, 32, severed the wiring during an overtime shift May 10, authorities said. It was to have been his final day on the Chinook line before being transferred to a V-22 Osprey line. Boeing discovered the damage two days later.
Meehan said the crime was a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He suggested that Montgomery may have been unhappy at work, but offered little else about motive:
“For whatever reason that was personal to him, the issue of his employment on that line, and some sense of appreciation or lack of appreciation for the job that he thought he was doing, seemed to be something which may have motivated him to act out in the way that he did,” Meehan said.
In an affidavit of probable cause outlining the case for Montgomery’s arrest, authorities linked the Bucks County man only to the wiring damage on one Chinook.
Damage to a second CH-47F was being investigated as a separate incident, and authorities asked the public and Boeing workforce to