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Lost Couple Breaks Into Nuclear Facility Hoping To Get Back On The Right Road

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 05:58 PST, May 30, 2016

A Virginia couple got so lost that they somehow wound up on a private access road into a nuclear facility and then cut the chain at the facility’s gate, apparently in an effort to get back on the right road, the York Daily Record is reporting.

Timothy Lee Stewart, 28, and his girlfriend, Jenilee Jean Simpson, 33, both of Chesapeake, Virginia, were driving from Baltimore to New York when they got lost in Pennsylvania. For reasons that are not clear, Stewart somehow wound up on an access road that leads to the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station.

For the record, the drive from Baltimore to New York City is a straight shot along Interstate 95, according to Google Maps. To get anywhere near Peach Bottom, you would have to get off of the interstate and go about 30 miles out of your way west.

Nevertheless, somehow the couple wound up where they weren’t supposed to be, and their situation went from bad to worse when they found themselves at the locked gate of the nuclear power facility. Simpson told police she had been asleep, and when she woke up, she saw her boyfriend cutting the chain that locks the entrance to the power plant.

Krista Merkel, a spokesperson for Exelon, the company that owns the power plant, made it clear that there was no sign that the couple was up to no good; they were just extremely lost, according to MSN.

“It seemed they inadvertently made it to our property and were trying to find their way back out. They thought the only way they could get back was to cut the fence.”

The police, however, were a little less forgiving and a little more direct in their assessment of the couple’s actions. Specifically, cops say the couple made their way to “highly security sensitive area where radioactive material is transferred from the main power plant.” Had they gone a few hundred feet this way or that, they would have been in an area where security guards, if they felt the couple had malicious intent, would have been justified in using “lethal force.”

Nevertheless, the couple — described by police as “extremely cooperative” — didn’t appear to have any malicious intent and instead waited with plant security while police were dispatched. Once the cops arrived and got everyone’s stories, Stewart was charged with second-degree felony criminal trespassing, and Simpson was charged with trespassing and possession of a controlled substance (a small metal pipe believed to contain marijuana residue was found in her possession).

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson Diane Screnci further confirmed that the couple never posed any danger to the plant’s operation and that security at the plant was, and is, “appropriate.”

So how did the Virginia couple get so lost that they wound up at a secure nuclear power facility? At this point, it’s not certain, but there have been instances in recent years of people who, relying on GPS and satellite navigation, have been sent to places they shouldn’t be, often to their peril.

In 2013, according to CBS Boston, a Boston woman, dutifully following her GPS unit’s directions, turned onto a set of railroad tracks. Realizing her vehicle was stuck, she and her children quickly got out of the vehicle. Shortly afterwards, her car was destroyed by an oncoming train.

Similar GPS blunders have sent people down abandoned logging or mining roads, into lakes, and even into the wrong country.

Do you believe the lost couple who broke into a nuclear power facility should be given a light punishment because they made an honest mistake?

[Image via Shutterstock/jaroslava V]

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