NEWPORT, Vt. — Onlookers were shocked as they watched a Newport, Vt., man go on the rampage Thursday and drive a large farm tractor over seven Orleans County Sheriff's Department vehicles, flattening them beyond repair.

The incident resulted in an estimated $300,000 damage to cruisers, a sheriff's transport van and equipment and other items in the vehicles, including police radios and personal belongings.

Roger Pion, 34, will appear for arraignment in a Vermont court in Newport this afternoon. He's expected to be accompanied by his lawyer, David Sleigh of St. Johnsbury, Vt., and enter pleas to 14 charges.

“I couldn't believe it,” said Gilles Delabruere, when he went outside his GMAC dealership in Newport — about 30 feet from where the destruction took place.

Delabruere, one of nine witnesses interviewed by state police, said he was having lunch at his business last Thursday when he thought his mechanics were making “an awful lot of racket” out back. He didn't expect the scene he discovered when he went outside.

“There was a guy in a tractor, and he'd had a head-on collision with one of the sheriff's cars. I thought it must be defective steering. I started to go over and see if I could help, but then he puts it in reverse and looked at me, and he did it again,” colliding with a cruiser, Delabruere said.

“Then he lines up four cars and goes right over the top of them, just like he's been doing that for years. I was shocked!

“It was not a tractor malfunction,” Delabruere said, “It was a brain malfunction.” Delabruere lives about eight miles north of Newport in West Charleston, Vt., five miles or so from the Canadian border. He has owned his dealership for 30 years.

“In all my life, I'll never see that again,” he said.

Sheriff's department personnel were unaware of what was going on in their parking lot until a neighbor phoned them. Sheriff Kirk Martin said a couple of his officers had just gone back inside after washing some of the cruisers when Pion appeared in the 20,000-pound Case tractor.

When officers later got the call and ran outside to see Pion departing, they had no working vehicles to pursue him, and had to chase the tractor on foot along Route 5.

Meanwhile, Newport City police — including Sgt. Nicholas Rivers and officer Tanner Jacobs, who were eating at the Brown Cow Restaurant — were about to become involved in the chase.

They heard the radio description of the tractor, spotted it going by and pulled up behind it.

That's when, they said, Pion looked back and also spotted them. Then, according to the officer, he threw the tractor in reverse and took a run at them. After backing up as far as they could, the police officers bailed out.

”Sergeant Rivers and I exited our vehicle in fear that the defendant was going to run us over,” Jacobs wrote in a sworn affidavit.

The two officers drew their guns and ordered Pion out of the tractor, and were soon joined by numerous other police who “continued to order the operator to exit the vehicle,” Jacobs wrote. Pion eventually complied and was taken into custody.

Jacobs said he “observed a small pistol lying next to” Pion, and moved it away from him. It was, according to Vermont State Police, a loaded gun.

Pion is being held on $50,000 bail pending today's court appearance.

If found guilty, he could spend decades in prison. The run he took at the two Newport City officers resulted in an aggravated assault charge. That count alone is punishable by up to 16 years in prison. The charges include seven felony-level counts of unlawful mischief.

bhookway@newstote.com