Weekend Vandals Sow Destruction At Scrap Company

Vandals using a machine that plucks scrap metal from railroad cars caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage at scrap yard that stretches a mile along the Allegheny River in Sharpsburg, O'Hara and Aspinwall.

Workers returning early Tuesday, Sept. 2, from the long Labor Day weekend to their jobs at Azcon Scrap Corp. discovered the damage that included a barge that was sunk, a forklift driven into the river and a destroyed building.

Police are investigating the possibility the damage could have been caused by workers unhappy with recent contract negotiations.

"They just settled a contract. There could have been disgruntled workers. We're looking into that," O'Hara police officer Dennis Szafranski said. "Obviously, it would have to be somebody that knows how to run these machines."

Azcon plant Manager Mike Marsh declined comment.

Police said a device called a scrap handler caused most of the damage. The machine, which employs a powerful magnet attached to an arm to pick scrap metal out of rail cars, was used to destroy a 15-foot-by-20-foot building from which the plant's electricity is distributed.

"They swung that arm back and forth to knock the walls of the power building down," Szafranski said. "It must have sounded like the world was ending."

The vandals stopped short of wrecking the electrical infrastructure inside the building, he said. "If they did any more damage to it, they probably would have electrocuted themselves."

County detectives called to the scene early yesterday were expected to interview the plant's more than 50 employees and the security personnel who watched the plant over the weekend.

The company dismantles and compresses scrap metal before shipping it to steel plants. The yard, which has limited fencing around it, was watched over the weekend by security guards, Szafranski said. But the guards did not report any vandalism, and police weren't called to the plant before workers returned from the three-day weekend yesterday morning.

Company officials told police the guards normally didn't patrol the quarter-mile section of the plant where the damage occurred, a parcel of riverfront land near the Highland Park Bridge in O'Hara and Aspinwall.

It was the second act of vandalism in the past year at the plant. Six months ago, two company pickup trucks were destroyed by a scrap handler. No arrests were made in that attack, Szafranski said.

In addition to smashing the power building, the assailants destroyed one of the scrap handlers by bashing the cab with the magnetic arm of another scrap handler, he said.

He said he did not have an exact dollar value for the damage but said it was in the tens of thousands of dollars. North Hills (Pennsylvania) News Record