Pennsylvania State Police say that a woman is facing multiple charges after an unusual encounter with a truck driver earlier this month.
Fifty-seven year old Albany Township resident Renee E. Dieter has been charged with attempted robbery, making terroristic threats, reckless endangerment and carrying a firearm in a vehicle without a license, according to a report in the Reading Eagle.
Police say that the charges stem from an incident that happened on July 9 in Berks County.
Police say that around 3 p.m., a truck driver traveling on west I-78 lost several chains and chain binders. He stopped his truck a quarter of a mile from where he lost the chains and ran back to pull the equipment off the interstate and into a pile on the shoulder of an entrance ramp.
Because the chains were heavy, the truck driver went back to his truck and backed it up along the shoulder to where the chains were piled up.
It was then that the truck driver said that he spotted Dieter placing his chains into her pickup.
He said that he confronted her by saying “Excuse me, ma’am, those chains are mine” and that she replied by pulling a firearm from a holster on her hip, pointing it at him, and informing him that “They are my … chains now.”
The truck driver then told Dieter that she was being recorded by his truck’s dash cam. She then is said to have put her gun away and drove away.
The truck driver drove on to a truck stop near Hamburg and called police. He gave them Dieter’s plate number.
Dieter was later contacted by police and arrested. She admitted to attempting to steal the chains, but said that the truck driver mistook her cellphone for a gun.