FEBRUARY 9–Felony snowball throwing charges have been leveled against two Virginia college students for allegedly pelting a city plow and an undercover police car during Saturday’s blizzard. Charles Gill and Ryan Knight, both 21, were nabbed by cops in Harrisonburg, where they attend James Madison University. According to police, the pair first targeted a city plow last Saturday afternoon. The driver responded by calling cops to report the frosty fusillade. When police responded to the scene in a bid to identify the assailants, their unmarked vehicle also came under an icy assault, according to a Harrisonburg Police Department press release. Gill and Knight, a guard on JMU’s basketball team, were then apprehended and booked into jail for throwing missiles at occupied vehicles, a felony. Gill (top) and Knight are pictured below in Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office mug shots. If convicted of the felonious snowball tossing, the men each face between one and five years in prison, and a maximum $2,500 fine.
You would think that by the age of 21 they would have learned that pelting cars is a dangerous and stupid idea. I learned that lesson when I was about 10 and had to run, screaming, from a man who decided to quickly dismount his vehicle and come chasing after me. Youth, endurance, and some fences saved my ass that day.
I agree 100%. Stupid thing to do, yes. Worthy of a felony? NO! Dumb idea on their behalf but worth losing their right to protect themselves and their families for the rest of their lives due to this?!? Absolute bullshit in my opinion, it’s a frickin’ snowball for Pete’s sake.
Do I think they should be convicted of a felony? No. But read the report, guys: they didn’t just toss a few innocent snowballs. They were throwing shovel fulls of snow onto a plow truck’s windshield. Then they tossed snow onto the unmarked police car and then inside it when the cops opened the doors. WTF?
Sounds like drunken idiocy putting people at risk.
I am not inclined to believe that police officers would want to waste their own time writing reports and booking people for some innocent snowballs. These guys clearly went above and beyond the call.
HPD and the City of Harrisonburg have received numerous calls regarding this incident. Please make note; this incident was more than a few snowballs thrown; it created a safety hazard for the drivers of both vehicles as well as adjacent vehicles.
This really is idiocy at the highest level. Do I think throwing snowballs at vehicles isnt the brightest idea?? Yup. Do I think its “felony” worthy?? nah.
They should tie these two morons to a stake and let the whole town pelt them with snowballs. A few hardpacked snowballs to the face and I’m sure these idiots would be cured of their “inner” need to throw snowballs.
I agree that too many things are felonies and people tend to get stacked a lot harder than they used to and more so than they should.
I would have to imagine, however, that there is a lot more to this story than just a couple young guys chucking snowballs at cars. I’m betting there was a lot of less than polite verbal jousting that followed, and they lost.
Having some familiarity with the area in question, dbrowne is likely right. The campus PD tends to treat the college kids in that area gently. The city PD is, shall we say, less generous and usually pretty level headed about these things.
Don’t throw things at state vehicles…especially cop cars.
…and even unmarked cars in the area are pretty obviously cop cars. How many crown vics have heavily tinted windows, a push bar, and five antennas sprouting out of them?
Unreported in the story is a pattern of dangerous and stupid behavior that has emerged among the college crowd in the last several months, including a “flash mob” in the library on that campus that posed a severe danger to the lives of literally hundreds of students and staff.
(a) Any person who throws any substance at a vehicle or any
occupant thereof on a highway is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(b) Any person who with intent to do great bodily injury
maliciously and willfully throws or projects any rock, brick, bottle,
metal or other missile, or projects any other substance capable of
doing serious bodily harm at such vehicle or occupant thereof is
guilty of a felony and upon conviction shall be punished by
imprisonment in the state prison.
One thing we learned as kids was not to throw crabapples or snowballs at pickup trucks. they ALWAYS stopped. Cop car? Never!
Making it a felony? I can see the danger (someone gets distracted, then swerves, hits a tree, etc, but make that a manslaughter charge). Virginia has always been a law and order state. I’m curious what the laws are like for the same offense in other states.
The country has made more and more offenses felonies, and these guys will likely never be able to vote, own a gun, and the prospects of finding a job that justifies their college degrees will become poor.
So in CA it would have been a misdemeanor correct? That sounds more reasonable.
As a side note, during my time living in Venezuela one of the families from the embassy that we knew lost their child’s life to a brick/stone thrown from a bridge on the way to the airport. It came through the window of the government suburban and decapitated their son. Throwing anything at vehicles is uncool.
Dumb ass 21 year old young men for sure, but everyone involved in them being charged with a felony should be kicked square in the nuts. BTW I include the two 21 year old young men in the getting kicked in the nuts category.
Something similar happened here in NOVA a few years back. Young newly wed couple driving down 395 I believe when some turd threw a rock from an overpass that went straight through their windshield and hit the wife. Not sure if she survived, but was in critical for some time. Darwin is working well for these two clowns.
Depends on what they threw… If it was a little fluffy soft snow ball, that would be a misdemeanor, but if it was a giant solid ice ball that would give you a bloody nose, or a black eye, if it hit you in the brain housing group, that would be a felony… All snowballs are not created equal and those are matters for the court to decide…