RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. - The man accused of using a bow and arrow in an attempt to steal a Union Pacific freight train Oct. 9 was charged on Wednesday with carjacking, assaulting police officers and grand theft, according to a story in the Ontario, Calif. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. While carjacking may seem an unusual count for a man suspected of trying to commandeer two locomotives and 71 freight cars, prosecutors said it was their only option for charging 43-year-old Juventino Vallejo-Camerena.
Deputy District Attorney Robert Lemkau said there doesn’t appear to be a state law on the books specific to the hijacking of a train. Carjacking, meanwhile, is defined as the taking of a “motor vehicle in the possession of another.”
“A train is a motor vehicle,” Lemkau said. “It’s a train. It moves. It’s a diesel.”
Police say Vallejo-Camerena, of Pomona, boarded the locomotive in Montclair last Sunday night armed with a homemade bow and arrow. He told the engineer and conductor the train belonged to him and ordered them out, according to police reports. The rail workers hit a fuel shutoff switch as they fled and called police.
Officers arrived a few minutes later and shot Vallejo-Camerena in the wrist and arm when he cocked his bow and pointed his arrow at them, investigators said. Vallejo-Camerena was treated at a local hospital and then booked into county jail on suspicion of train robbery.
Lemkau, however, said the train robbery charge didn’t seem appropriate because it is designed for robbers who board a train to steal from passengers. In this case, it appeared Vallejo-Camerena wanted to steal the train itself, not rob its occupants, the prosecutor said.
“It really wasn’t your classic train robbery,” he said. “It’s more like a carjacking.”
In addition to carjacking, prosecutors charged the man Wednesday with two counts of grand theft and two counts of assault on a police officer. The grand theft charges stem from Vallejo-C