Man Plows Pick-Up Truck Through Steubenville Pike Cemetery

STEUBENVILLE (KDKA) -- Those buried in the Paris Cemetery along Steubenville Pike rested in peace until 3 a.m. Thursday.

In those early morning hours, 23-year-old Cody Shambaugh of Arlington, Texas, crossed the center line in his GMC Sierra and began taking out tombstones and a utility pole with his pick-up.

"He said he was asleep. They said maybe alcohol was involved," says Leslie Grossmann, volunteer caretaker of the cemetery.

Pieces of headlights and trim mark the trail of tire tracks through the cemetery before grazing a tree and coming to a stop.

A woman driving to work just before 7 a.m. spotted the white pick-up. Police arrived to arrest Shambaugh and took him to Weirton Medical Center. He was okay.

Some of the old stones weigh 2,000 pounds.

"They said that they thought that my husband's stone had been hit, so I came to look," Thelma Long said.
To her relief, her husband Ward's grave was undisturbed. "It came very close - the one right beside him at the foot of his grave," Long said.

Shambaugh, who works for one of the Marcellus Shale wells companies, was charged with DUI and the damage to the cemetery. He remains in the Washington County Correctional Facility on a $50,000 straight bond.