“It was perfectly obvious someone would die if this hit just right.”
Not to a 14-year old it isn’t - they don’t think like that. Although I bet the four of them spending their lives in prison, and giving monthly videos to the kids back in school might get it through a bunch of heads not to do this.
When I was 14, there were guys placing things on the railroad tracks. Those guy were from my boarding school.
They weren’t only placing coins on the tracks. They were placing bars on the tracks. Someone also hit the train with a 22.
The feds hot-footed it out there and conducted an investigation, interviewed a number of the kids who were involved.
They claimed that if you lodged a short section of rail into the railroad ties just right, you could actually cause the train to buck and jump the tracks. I still don’t know if that’s actually true or not, but I’d never try it.
You would never have caught me placing something like that on the railroad tracks, and that was without any input from others at all.
14 year old boys know what they are doing, believe me.