'Politically Motivated' Video Surfaces, Shows Township Employees Shooting Up Car

MCHENRY COUNTY, IL - Longtime Algonquin Township Highway Commissioner Bob Miller is calling the timing of a video shared on YouTube that shows Algonquin Township highway employees firing off guns at an empty car before later destroying the vehicle with a loader “politically motivated.”

The video was published on YouTube on Friday -- just days before today’s primary election. Miller is running against Andrew Gasser and the winner will move forward uncontested to the April 4 election for the highway commissioner post.

Gasser said he just learned of the video in recent days and posted it to YouTube, according to the Northwest Herald. The video, according to Glasser, was shot on Algonquin Township property and the the ricochets flew into the McHenry County Conservation District's "The Hollows" forest preserve, at 3804 Route 14 in Cary. That forest preserve includes hiking trails throughout the property.

“Is this appropriate use of Algonquin Township Highway funds?” Gasser writes in a Friday statement.

The 8:24-minute video also shows the employees taking the car, which is riddled with bullets, for a joy ride.

“This car is f’d up,” one of the employee yells.

Later in the video, a loader can be seen demolishing the vehicle.

“Yeah baby. Highway department at work. You stall on the side of the road, watch out man,” one employee said as another employee got ready to smash the car with a pay loader.

"Hey, when nobody's looking, let's throw it on (Route) 14," one of the employee yells.

Miller, in a Facebook post on Friday, called the video “disappointing. He said he contacted one of the former employees in the video, who he recognized. That employee, was “let go some time ago,” said the video was filmed well after work hours over a decade ago, according to Miller.

In addition, Miller said the loader belonged to a local gravel company and not the township, according to the Northwest Herald.

" Obviously, that does not make it any more appropriate," Miller wrote on Facebook.

He said the video should have been brought first to him instead of shared over social media.

“I believe that the video is distressing and think that if the motivation of its release was, in fact, concern for our Township, that it would have been brought directly to me,” he wrote in Friday’s Facebook post. “Because it was obviously politically motivated, I found it on social media.”

He said he contacted the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office to open an investigation into the incident.

The office for the highway commissioner has been in Miller’s family since the 1960s with Miller’s father and father’s father-in-law previously holding the post, the Northwest Herald reports. Gasser is a McHenry County Board member and chairman of the township Republican Party.

Polls will remain open through 7 p.m. tonight. A full list of primary candidates in McHenry County can be found on the county clerk’s website. Results should be posted later tonight on the clerk’s website.

More via the Northwest Herald

Photo via YouTube screenshot