A homemade tank that shattered half a town

Lying with public administration can be tedious. Paper, dilated times and procedures that could be done in a couple of clicks online, but that we have to perform in person. At most, We can frustrate ourselvesangry and release some expletive like taking a bulldozer and you would get to knock down public buildings, knowing that you would never do something like that.

The problem is that, precisely, that is what a man named Marvin Heemeyer did in 2004 in the town of Granby, in Colorado.

Marvin Heemeyer. At the time of the events, Marvin was 52 years old. He was a veteran of the United States Air Forces and his profession was that of welder in the aforementioned Granbybut the story began much earlier. In 1992, Heemeyer bought Some land with the intention of renting them to a friend who wanted to set up a repair workshop. Those lands were owned by a family, the Docheff, and it seems that they were not very happy for Marvin’s victory in the auction.

The price of land? $ 42,000 of the time and was very basic, since it did not have a solution for fecal waters and access depended on contiguous land. The City Council told him that he had to solve that, connecting to the sewer (another $ 42,000) or putting a septic tank. He refused and, meanwhile, the friend who was going to rent the land was disenchanted with the business, so Heemeyer himself opened there a silencer repair workshop.

Culebrón. The Docheff did not forget the 1992 auction in which Marvin took the land and, in 1997, they attacked. As? Buying the lands around Marvin to create a cement plant. In principle, Marvin also wanted to buy, but he first requested $ 250,000, then another $ 125,000 and, when the Docheff got the land, Heemeyer raised the price to $ 450,000 again.

There was no agreement, but the Docheff continued their plan. Heemeyer undertook an action to put the people against the cement plant claiming that it would be an ecological attack, but little by little he was losing support, especially when the city newspaper argued that he had a personal revenge against the Docheff.

To attack. In 2000, the welder filed a lawsuit to block the project. He claimed that the construction would block access to their business, but local officials unanimously approved the construction and, although he appealed, nobody paid attention to him. He climbed the case to the Environmental Protection Agency, which also went from the matter.

In 2001, almost in an act of pride, the Docheff made an offer to Heemeyer: if he withdrew the demand, they would provide a line of connection to the sewer of the new concrete plant without paying a dollar. Marvin did not take it well, precisely. The tank truck used to accumulate fecal waters was filled and its decision was to pump the waste to a plot attached to its own.

Illegalities. It was also attempted illegally to sewage a neighbor, but they caught him and, because he was not connected to the service and other irregularities, it was fined with $ 2,500, about $ 4,400 today. The city had tired of Marvin and threw an ultimatum: either it was up to date or could not use the property for commercial purposes.

‘Killdozer’. Marvin felt that the city had laughed at him, that the administrations ignored him and that he had been marginalized. And nothing took it, but nothing right. In October 2002, he announced the closure of the business. Sold everything: materials, land and an excavator Komatsu D344a That had bought that same year. And yes, he placed part of his property for $ 400,000 (much more than for what he bought it ten years before), but there was something that failed to get rid of: the excavator.

“Signal of God”. He saw him as “a sign of God” to carry out his revenge against the city. For months, Marvin worked by armoring the excavator. He did not hide and, in fact, he mentioned both the machine and his plans to use it destructively, but nobody paid attention to him. The excavator, known as’Killdozer‘And baptized as’ Marv’s Komatsu Tank’ by Heemeyer himself, he was unrecognizable.

He had armored the entire cabin area with a steel layer of several millimeters thick, a concrete layer and another outer steel layer. It covered part of the Oruga system, but also the engine and the cabin in full. Or he ran out of gas, or it was unstoppable. In addition, he had placed cameras protected by almost eight centimeters of plastic abroad that sent two monitors in the dashboard, had fans to stay fresh and the most worrying thing: three nozzles with mounted weapons, ready to shoot abroad.

133 minutes of horror. With this makeshift tank, the desktop of June 4, 2004, Heemeyer began his revenge. And he did it against the Cody Docheff cement plant. The businessman thought that the vehicle was controlled remotely, so he began to shoot without causing any effect. The city police also fired several rounds against the excavator without being able to damage the cameras. It was unstoppable and the videos are spooky.

Killdozer. The ‘Killdozer’ takes all that with what clashes with and, after attacking the concrete plant, Heemeyer headed towards the city. There it destroyed cars, the facade of the City Council, the Police Police Station and several Patrol cars, as well as a few businesses. The objectives were not casual: the aforementioned City Council, an office of a person who was part of the land requalification board, the police station, the local newspaper and other properties of people who would have been against Marvin in his peculiar dispute with the Docheff.

“God built me ​​for this work”. During more than two hoursthe police followed the vehicle totally helpless. In some tapes sent to his brother Shortly before the attack, Marvin declared that he was surprised that no one had caught him by modifying the excavator and that all that was part of enforcing the will of God

He affirmed that Dios had built it to give a lesson to the city of Granby and that that is why he was single and without children: his mission in life was to carry out the attack. In the three hours of recording, Marvin attacked everyone in the community, stating that “to get ahead, you have to trample the neighbor and speak badly about neighbor at all times. He also said that his death was inevitable. He was not wrong.

Revenge of seven million dollars. After disfiguring a dozen buildings, the excavator stuck in the back of a hardware store. He had no way out, but he did not know that he was not going to leave that. He had not killed anyone (by chance, since he repeatedly shot at flammable objects that, if he had exploded, would have had dire consequences), but he was clear that he had already fulfilled and He took his life of a shot inside your tank.

7 million. The commotion in the city was terrible and the damage was estimated at seven million dollars. But, as this to extol people who perform questionable facts is nothing new, Heemeyer had defenders. They affirmed that voluntarily decided not to kill anyone, just end material goods, and there are those who catalog it as a martyr and an example of an act of patriotic civil disobedience against the corrupt authorities.

To prevent the excavator from becoming a pilgrimage point, in April 2005 the city unscathed and distributed its pieces for different scrapping. And, if you are thinking that it is a movie story, there is. Is called ‘TRAD‘, but unfortunately in Spain it is not available anywhere. And it is a shame because it has very good assessments.

Images | Michael Thomson

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