BUCKHANNON — An elderly Upshur County man is behind bars after sheriff’s deputies said he rammed three different vehicles into three different homes early Thursday morning on purpose.
Marvin “Buck” Tenney, 82, of Buckhannon is lodged in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail without bond. Upshur County Sheriff Mike Coffman said he faced an array of charges including three counts of felony attempted murder.
Deputies were called to a home in the Buckhannon area around 2 a.m. Thursday for a vehicle into a house. Deputies arrived to find a mini-van lodged inside a mobile home at a local trailer court. Bystanders quickly alerted deputies the suspected driver was passing by in a pickup truck and refused to pull over.
“He ends up running and wouldn’t stop. They chased him several miles up the road into Tennerton on a dead end street. He ends up running through a yard and into the side of another house,” Coffman told MetroNews.
As deputies were taking Tenney into custody they learned a third home had also been rammed with another vehicle prior to their original 911 alert.
The three crashes sent three people to the hospital. Two of the victims are at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, including a female who is in critical condition and was transported by HealthNet. Coffman said her injuries are life threatening. A man who was in the double-wide trailer with the woman is also at Ruby and suffered severe injuries as well. The third victim, who was in the last house rammed, was treated at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Buckhannon.
According to the Sheriff, it was a deliberate and planned act.
“This was a targeted, planned attack on these victims. It had been brewing for a couple of weeks according to his statements. We served him with some court papers yesterday and probably pushed the timing over the edge. But this was very pre-meditated and had been in the planning stage for a couple of weeks. It’s not like this was an 82 year old who was demented, it’s a little different case than that,” explained Coffman.
Tenney was familiar with the residents in all three homes and had been in confrontations with them in recent weeks. The court papers served by deputies were restraining orders according to Coffman after their earlier encounters had grown increasingly heated.
Coffman said Tenney lived within yards of the first two homes and was able to crash his vehicle into one and quickly retrieve a second vehicle to hit the second home quickly. All three of the vehicles belonged to Tenney.
“This is something we don’t see here in Upshur County very often. We’re still investigating it and gathering information. He told us he had it all planned out and he knew he’d be going to jail. He also strategically aimed the vehicles at parts of the homes where he knew people would be sleeping at two o’clock in the morning,” Coffman said.
Tenney is being held on $1 million cash-only bail.
