Josh Broadwater
A 17-year-old self-professed stuntman has been charged with trespassing after authorities found online video of him jumping off bridges and dams and into the water.
Josh Broadwater has a page at the social networking site Myspace.com that lists his occupation as "stuntman" and his heroes as the stars of MTV's stunt show "Jackass."
"I'm just doing it for, like, fun, and I put them on the Internet so people can watch them for entertainment," Broadwater told The Associated Press on Friday in a telephone interview.
He acknowledged he trespassed to jump off a privately owned railroad bridge spanning the North Branch of the Potomac River for a video recorded May 8.
He was charged as a juvenile Wednesday and released to the custody of a parent, according to the Combined County Criminal Investigation unit, an operation of the Maryland State Police and local agencies. Operations Supervisor Jon Dudiak confirmed the defendant was the youth shown in the online videos.
Broadwater first came to authorities' attention May 18, when he was injured after jumping off the 90-foot spillway of a reservoir dam into the water in Pennsylvania. Tammi Dolan said her son suffered a concussion and an elbow gash in the stunt, first reported as a fall.
Investigators later got a tip that the tumble had been deliberate -- and videotaped, Dudiak said. They then found online videos of Broadwater leaping from bridges in the Cumberland area, including some posted with "No Trespassing" signs.
"It's dangerous. There's an inherent danger any time you do something like that," Dudiak said.
A Pennsylvania Waterways Conservation officer is investigating the spillway jump, said Don Lauver, a regional manager with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
Dolan said in a telephone interview that she has ordered him to stop doing dangerous tricks.
"Josh just wants to be a professional stuntman. Basically, I don't think he actually knew how to go about it," she said.
