The pickup drove into the Honesdale station in Cherry Ridge Township in Wayne County at about 6:53 p.m. Sept. 3, damaging the building’s entrance and communications room and disrupting telephone service, state police said.
The communications officer inside the room suffered minor injuries, police said.
The driver fled on foot but was found a short time later along Ski Run Road, where state police and Honesdale Borough police took him into custody, police said.
Wade Louis Rickard, 36, of Honesdale, was taken to Wayne Memorial Hospital and then transported to Wayne County Prison for arraignment, police said.
Rickard was charged with 25 counts, including four counts each of aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle while driving under the influence, reckless endangerment, and simple assault, court records obtained by Daily Voice on Friday, Sept. 4, showed.
He is also charged with terrorism intended to affect the conduct of government, risking catastrophe, felony criminal mischief, institutional vandalism, and DUI, the records showed.
Bail was set at $6 million, and Rickard remained in Wayne County Prison after being unable to post it, court records showed. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 9.
It was not Rickard’s first case involving allegations against a public official.
State police arrested Rickard in 2022 after he was accused of making indirect threats toward a Wayne County elected official, WBRE/WYOU reported.
Police said Rickard sent text messages to his mother saying he needed to kill the official before he left, the outlet reported. Investigators said he later sent an image of a cartoon holding a decapitated head and wrote that he would kick the official in public.
The official sought a protection-from-abuse order, according to the report.
While Rickard initially faced terroristic-threat and threats-to-harm-an-elected-official charges, he pleaded guilty in July 2023 to harassment, court records showed. He was sentenced the following month to two to 12 months in Wayne County Correctional Facility, with credit for 17 days already served, plus a $500 fine and drug-and-alcohol evaluation, the records showed.
He also pleaded guilty in July to misdemeanor defiant trespass in a separate June 2026 case in Cherry Ridge Township. Disorderly conduct and harassment counts were withdrawn, court records showed.
Earlier records show Rickard pleaded guilty in 2015 to fleeing police, DUI, and criminal mischief in a 2014 case. He also pleaded guilty to a highest-rate DUI in 2010, according to the dockets.
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