Cops: Lost Couple Cut Lock at Nuke Plant

'They thought the only way they could get back was to cut the fence'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 30, 2016 12:47 AM CDT
Cops: Lost Couple Cut Lock at Nuke Plant
The Peach Bottom nuclear power plant is seen in Delta, Pa.    (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

A couple trying to drive from Baltimore to New York somehow ended up at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, where they decided cutting a chain at a gate to a secure area was the best way forward, police say. Timothy Lee Stewart, 28, and Jenilee Jean Simpson, 33, have been charged with trespassing at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, the York Daily Record reports. Cops say Stewart arrived on an access road and cut the chain at a "secured fenced-in area" Friday night. Simpson told police she had been sleeping and woke up to see her boyfriend cutting the lock off a fence.

"It seemed they inadvertently made it to our property and were trying to find their way back out," company spokeswoman Krista Merkel says. "They thought the only way they could get back was to cut the fence." Police initially said the couple had made it to a sensitive area where security could have used lethal force if they tried to enter an outbuilding holding radioactive material, the AP reports, but Merkel says they were never a threat and were monitored by security the entire time they were on plant property. Cops say Simpson has also been charged with possession of a controlled substance. (This lost driver ended up in a lake after following GPS instructions.)

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