Man who took joyride at Serpent Mound sentenced

Daniel C. Dargavell pleaded guilty in Adams County Court Friday to driving intoxicated onto the Serpent Mound property in the middle of the night in July and doing damage, including tearing tire marks in a 2,000-year-old Adena burial mound.

Dargavell was sentenced to two years of probation and his driver's license was suspended for six months.

The young man, 19 at the time of the incident, was also ordered to pay a $375 fine and perform 100 hours of community service at the Serpent Mound property, eight of which he has completed, according to court documents.

Dargavell has already paid back $3,790 in restitution for the damage he did to the property.

The prosecutor's office had been considering felony charges for his joyride around the property, home to Serpent Mound, one of the world's best preserved and defined ceremonial mounds constructed by ancient people. The mound is shaped like a snake. Its exact age is unknown and it is a National Historic Landmark.

Dargavell did not drive onto the Serpent Mound, but on a nearby burial mound also located in the park.

Dargavell pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle while intoxicated, desecration and criminal damaging, charges that carried roughly a year of jail time.

Besides the three days he spent in jail after he was arrested, that time was waived, said Adams County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Armstrong.

Sentencing was held off for about four months to construct the plea deal and because the prosecutor's office wanted to see if he would show up for community service and write a research paper on the site, indicating proof he was sorry for his actions, Armstrong said.

"He was drunk and I think he realized he was stupid," Armstrong said. "I didn’t want a felony to follow him the rest of his life."

That's not to say Armstrong, who is active in the Adams County Historical Society and a former teacher, wasn't miffed by Dargavell's actions.

That's why Armstrong asked Dargavell to write a research paper on the mound, which the young man completed but Armstrong declined to share.

"That was for me," Armstrong said, "to make him think about it."