People are known for going a tad overboard when listening to their favorite metal band. At cheap club shows, a bathroom door having a hole punched in it or the door to the back deck ripped off is just a sign that the promoter booked the right band. While a contained area where that behavior is expected, sometimes people let the intrusive thoughts win, and they act like that in public.
For 34-year-old John G. Hargreaves, those thoughts became reality as he plowed his Toyota Rav4 through a garage door of a house in Liberty Township, NJ. According to James Pfeiffer, a Warren County prosecutor, “the investigation showed that at approximately 6:17 p.m. … the defendant deliberately crashed his gold Toyota SUV into the garage of a private residence in an attempt to scare or harass the homeowner, who the defendant knew.”
Just minutes later, he chose his next target, the Independence Township Police Department. Located just down the road and only 10 minutes northeast of Liberty Township, Independence is the department that would respond to Liberty’s calls for law enforcement. Much like the memes about taking on injustice, when Hargreaves plowed into the police department, the famed Guns n’ Roses classic “Welcome to The Jungle” was blasting from the vehicle’s stereo system.
Now facing one count of first-degree terrorism and one count of causing widespread injury or damage, he was booked into the Warren County Correctional Center without further incident. On just the terrorism charge, he could face 30 years to life in prison if convicted. This one charge alone has a “no early release” designation, so if convicted, he would serve the whole sentence. Additional charges of burglary, harassment, aggravated assault, criminal mischief, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, among others, are also pending for his plowing into the house in Liberty Township.
