Women burned holes in Dakota Access pipeline and set fire to equipment, officials say

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include the motives of the two women who have been sentenced to prison in this case.

The original story continues below.

A second woman was sentenced to prison after the pair caused serious damage to the Dakota Access pipeline, federal officials say.

Ruby Katherine Montoya, 32, of Arizona, was sentenced to six years in prison on Friday, Sept. 23, on a charge of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

An attorney for Montoya could not be immediately reached by McClatchy News.

Montoya, along with co-defendant Jessica Reznicek, has also been ordered to pay $3.19 million in restitution. A federal judge gave an eight-year prison sentence to Reznicek in June 2021 on the same charge as Montoya.

The two admitted to “using an oxyacetylene cutting torch to burn holes in the pipeline” and “setting fire to pipeline instrumentation and equipment” throughout parts of the pipeline in Iowa, officials said.

The underground Dakota Access Pipeline spans 1,172 miles from North Dakota to Illinois.

U.S. Attorney Richard Westphal referred to the crimes as “domestic terrorism.”

“The seriousness of the (Montoya’s) actions – that occurred multiple times, at different locations, resulting in over $3 million dollars in restitution – warranted the significant prison sentence imposed by the court and should deter others who think of engaging in such criminal acts,” he said in a news release.

Reznicek and Montoya purposefully damaged the pipelines “to protect natural resources and indigenous people’s sovereignty,” they said in a 2017 news conference, the Des Moines Register reported.

They said it was up to them to take action to improve the quality of life for their children.

“The courts and public officials allowed these corporations to steal permissions from landowners and brutalize the land, water, and people,” the women stated at the time. “Our conclusion is that the system is broken and it is up to us as ....individuals to take peaceful action and remedy it, and this we did, out of necessity.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2022 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Women burned holes in Dakota Access pipeline and set fire to equipment, officials say."