His day of protest began lying on railroad tracks

WINONA, Minn. – Marian is one of Winona’s shortest streets – along the Canadian Pacific mainline beyond the Welch Aquatic Center on the West End. It’s a quiet and leafy residential block. For police a long  saga began Thursday about 11:35 a.m. with a call. A man was postate on the CP tracks in front of a train. This was on the tracks behind Marian Street:

> 11:35 a.m. A train crew reported a man lying on the right-of-way. The train managed to halt in time. The man ran off. Located by police, Perry Scott Topness , age 42, said he was protesting train noise that kept him awake all night.  He was intoxicated, police said.

> 12:08 p.m.  The first of 11 angry and incoherent calls were made to the emergency police dispatch line. The rants included police inaction about the trains. The calls were abusive. The caller berated dispatchers as “a bunch of cunts.” Told to stop calling, he didn’t. Dispatch logs showed 11 calls over 154 minutes.

> 12:58 p.m. Between the calls police said that Perry called a friend to help move his broken-down  car off the street into his driveway. When the friend arrived, he said, Perry charged out of the house and swung at him repeatedly.The friend called police but said he didn’t want to press charges and left.

> 9:42 p.m. Police were called back to Marian Street. Neighbors said Topness had been at their house and had threatened to kill them. By the time police arrived, Topness had gone back to his place and didn’t respond to knocks on the door. The officers retreated. Why risk a confrontation? Figuring that Topness would have to come out eventually. They kept an eye on the place, in the 1100 block of Marian. They also began extra patrols in the neighborhood.

Tranquility on Marian. The morning after. Image: Steve Lunde