AUBURN — The trial of a second defendant charged with trespassing for sitting on the tracks to block a train carrying crude oil through Maine has ended in a hung jury.

Prosecutors tell the Sun Journal they are still trying to determine whether they will retry Jessie Dowling of Unity, whose trial this week in Androscoggin County Superior Court ended when the jury could not reach a verdict.

Dowling’s co-defendant, Douglas Bowen Jr. of Porter, was convicted in an unusual trial in which he and Dowling were tried in the same courtroom with separate juries.

They were arrested in August 2013 when they sat down on railroad tracks in Auburn. They said they wanted to block oil trains and prevent a disaster like the one weeks earlier in Lac Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.


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