Tacoma man accused of sabotaging 8 substations
Zachary Rosenthal has been indicted for attacks on power stations across Washington and Oregon, causing major outages and damage.
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USA, Washington, Tacoma: A Tacoma man already charged with damaging two power substations in Oregon now faces expanded federal charges for allegedly sabotaging six more in Washington state.
Zachary Rosenthal, 33, was indicted for conspiracy to destroy substations, five counts of destruction, and one count of attempted destruction. Prosecutors say the attacks occurred between June and December 2022 and impacted thousands of customers.
In Washington, Rosenthal and unnamed co-conspirators are accused of attacking the Toledo substation in Lewis County (Aug. 5), Woodland 1 and 2 substations in Cowlitz County (Nov. 17–18), the Puyallup and Tumwater substations (Nov. 22), and attempting to damage the Oakville substation in Grays Harbor County (Dec. 5).
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the attackers used firearms and heavy chains to damage equipment and cause short circuits. Each substation outage affected between 1,000 and 6,000 customers. Prosecutors allege the motive was to facilitate thefts from businesses and ATMs during blackouts.
Rosenthal is also accused of causing over $100,000 in damage to the Ostrander substation in Oregon City and over $5,000 to the Sunnyside substation in Clackamas.
Separately, he faces charges for stealing 24 firearms from a federally licensed dealer in Milwaukie in January 2023.
He remains in custody in Washington on unrelated vehicular assault charges and has not yet appeared in Seattle federal court for the new indictment.
Source: Oregon Live
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