By KAREN PARKER
County Line Publisher Emeritus
Norwalk business owner Lucas Bender will face a pretrial conference Monday, March 5, after being charged with terrorism in January.
According to the criminal complaint filed on Jan. 18, “Monroe County Dispatch Center (contacted Deputy David Sundvall) indicating that Excel Energy called and stated that Lucas Bender had made threats to shoot Excel Energy employees and cut down all of the power poles in Norwalk.”
The incident evidently stemmed from the power being disconnected from Bender’s business, the Long Shot Saloon.
Bender told Sundvall that he had paid his bill and had expected the power would be restored 24 hours after it had been shut off. When that failed to happen, he called Excel and said he “would sit there with a gun because he wanted to see results,” according to the complaint. He admitted he was worried about the pipes freezing.
Excel Energy staff members had a different story. They told the Monroe County Dispatch Center that Bender had said, “So I will be sitting there waiting with a shotgun, and I’ll shoot the bastard!” Bender continued to yell and curse at the representative, according to the complaint.
Bender called a second time and said, “There is going go to be a big outage in the entire village if it’s not turned back on because I will go out there and I will cut every light pole down.”
According to the complaint, Bender then said, “And then I think I’m going to go sit outside your La Crosse or your Sparta office and wait for a retard to show up there.”
Bender was taken into custody but later released on bail.
Terrorism threats are punishable as a Class I felony, and perpetrators may be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than three years and six months, or both.