12 June 2010

Hollywood Hopeful Faces Charges

Cochrane Alberta - Attempting to get a break in Hollywood, a Cochrane man is accused of breaking the law after video of an eye-popping jump from a bridge to a running train was posted online.
 
The 19-year-old wannabe stunt man is now having to defend himself in court following a charge of mischief laid Friday.
 
The stunt was carried out 17 May 2010, when the accused appeared to jump from the Highway 22 overpass onto a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train in Cochrane.
 
The moving train was halted and officers charged the man with trespassing.
 
But the video appeared on the Internet, and Chris Ball, who also goes by the online monicker Chris Bawl, was viewed by thousands.
 
"I'm gonna jump on top of this moving train," a voice can be heard saying at the beginning of the video.
 
"Oh my God, what am I doing?"
 
"Maybe that was a bad idea because now I'm stuck on top of a moving train."
 
He's also seen in other Internet videos leaping from the roof to the hood of a moving SUV, climbing out the driver's window and on to the roof of a moving vehicle, and throwing himself off a cliff.
 
The Canadian Pacific Police Service, assisted by Cochrane RCMP, and the Calgary Police Service, searched Ball's residence, seizing a computer, camera, and electronic storage devices.
 
Mike LoVecchio, a CPR spokesman, said public safety and that of the train crews are the company's top priority and life-threatening situations unnerve the engineer and conductor.
 
"They're the ones that witness it happening and incidents such as this are absolutely preventable by never trespassing and certainly never pulling a stunt like leaping onto a moving freight train."
 
Ball appears in court on 8 Jul 2010.
 
Renato Gandia.