Woman arrested as Spaceport trucks roll

Monday marked the first day of what residents and business owners in Truth or Consequences will experience for the next six months as big trucks rumble through town to reach Spaceport America.

Trucks began carrying tons of material to the spaceport through the downtown area, which brought out protestors trying to stop traffic.

Commercial flights from the Spaceport are supposed to carry passengers into space within a couple years, but in the meantime it's sending some people into frenzy.

A Sierra County deputy said he went to downtown T or C where protestors threatened to stop trucks by standing in front of them in crosswalks where "pedestrians have the absolute right of way...and cannot be arrested for being in them," according to an e-mail that had been circulating the town.

The deputy went out to the area with a camera in hand to make sure everyone stayed safe. He ended up arresting one woman for obstructing an officer, concealing identity and violating pedestrians' right of way in crosswalks when he said the woman stepped in front of a truck headed to the spaceport.

"They wrestled her to the ground," Deborah Toomey, who witnessed the arrest of her friend, told KRQE News 13.

Leighlilly Throckmorton was put in handcuffs and could be seen in another friend's home video as two deputies take her away with her legs folded as she seemingly resists being arrested.

Kim Audette, who took the video, can be heard shouting in support of Throckmorton.

"They put her in the police car," Audette said. "She was shopping. What's the point of that?

"I can't imagine why'd they do that to her."

Audette and Toomey said Throckmorton was not protesting the trucks and that she was in a crosswalk when she was arrested.

However a deputy said Throckmorton violated the law because he saw her "suddenly leave a curb...into the path of a vehicle that (was) so close it (was) impossible for the driver to yield."

He said he also videotaped Throckmorton violating the law and that the video was being forwarded as evidence to the district attorney's office.

This is just a sliver of what some in T or C have felt since learning trucks will make an estimated 13,000 trips through their quiet town to haul 400,000 tons of gravel to the spaceport about 25 miles east of the city.

The streets through downtown are narrow. They run right past Twila McBride's store.

"My concern is this is a heavily pedestrian area," McBride said.

"They are putting the safety of the citizens of Truth or Consequences in jeopardy," Toomey added.

Gina Kelley, the director of Sierra County's Tourism Department, said contractors looked at alternate routes. The state thought the route they decided on would be the quickest from the gravel pit and the cheapest, she added.

Not only is the Spaceport creating jobs, but the contractors hired for this first phase of building are staying in a local hotel, so the town is benefiting financially, Kelley continued.

"Unfortunately, the minority is the more vocal," Kelley said. "We voted for it, and in that vote there was an implicit understanding that we were going to have to be inconvenienced for awhile."

Construction on the first phase is expected to last for six months.