Brain Injury Lawyer Blog

Date: 1/5/2009

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Boeing employee who vandalized a $24 million military helicopter was sentenced Monday to five months in prison and five months on home confinement after telling the judge the tension and tedium of his assembly-line job had gotten to him.

“I know now that a factory environment is not the place for me,” Matthew Montgomery said in court.

Montgomery, 33, of Trevose, used his work-issued wire cutters to sever about 70 electrical wires running from the cockpit to the main body of a nearly finished H-47 Chinook on May 10 — his last shift on an assembly line in Ridley Township, in suburban Philadelphia.

The helicopter would not have been able to fly, so there was no risk of injury, and the damage was readily spotted by plant officials two days later. The vandalism led Boeing officials to shut down the assembly line for two days.

The same week, a suspicious washer was found in a second helicopter. No one has been charged in that incident, which remains under investigation, authorities said Monday.

Montgomery told the judge he did not know how to deal with the stress of the job. He also was upset about being transferred to another job at the Ridley Township plant after applying for positions at other Boeing Co. sites.

“He was upset about the repetitive nature of his tasks,” public defender Mara Meehan wrote in a sentencing memo that also outlined family problems beginning in Montgomery’s childhood.

Meehan also said that in a psychiatric evaluation, Montgomery said he “took his frustration out on a machine because he would never harm another person.”

Montgomery, who earned $19 an hour, pleaded guilty in September to one count of destroying property under contract to the government. He also was ordered to pay $110,000 in restitution.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick sentenced Montgomery at the low end of the 10- to 16-month guideline range.

“Although the defendant has no prior criminal history, the defendant’s crime was violent and senseless,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Votaw wrote in a recent memo asking for a sentence within the guideline range.

Montgomery was ordered to report to prison on Feb. 17.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.