Goodview Park in Wyoming, Minn. (Google Maps).
A Minnesota man was charged after police said he set traps on the lawn near a park to keep kids from using his yard as a shortcut.
Kyle James Steffen, 39, was charged with setting a spring gun/pitfall/deadfall/snare and will have to appear in court to answer to the gross misdemeanor charge. According to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime, Steffen lives at the edge of Goodview Park in Wyoming, Minnesota. Police responded to a report from a woman that Steffen was “yelling at her children” to stay out of his yard. The woman also told police that she found “spikes” placed on his lawn.
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According to the complaint, police found the so-called “spikes” when they responded to an area near Steffen’s home. In the complaint, officers described what they found as a “3-foot long, 5-inch-wide piece of thick clear plastic” in the grass that had “40 3-inch screws sticking up from the plastic.” Police said the “homemade spike strip” was a “pitfall” designed to keep young bicycle riders from using Steffen’s yard as a shortcut into Goodview Park.
Around the plastic strip, police observed “bike tracks running under and around the plastic piece.”
When police spoke to Steffen at his home, he admitted to planting the spike strip to keep kids on bikes off his lawn. Steffen told police that he had “yelled at the kids hundreds of times” but that they continued to ride through his yard “out of spite.”
Police wrote that Steffen “seemed frustrated that the device was not effective in keeping kids off of his lawn.”
Steffen was not booked into jail but is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 25 in connection with the gross misdemeanor charge. Local NBC affiliate KARE reported that a conviction on the offense could result in a 180-day prison sentence or a $1,000 fine.
The post Man set spike traps to keep kids on bikes off his lawn, who kept riding over it ‘out of spite’: Police first appeared on Law & Crime.
