Biography
Samantha Frances Brooks is a Bellingham, Washington activist who placed a shunting device on BNSF railroad tracks near Bellingham with Ellen Reiche on November 28, 2020, in solidarity with the Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs opposing pipeline construction across British Columbia. A shunt makes a stretch of track read as occupied, which halts trains; the two were arrested at the scene and charged by complaint on November 30, 2020 under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, the federal statute covering terrorist attacks and other violence against railroad carriers. Brooks pleaded guilty in July 2021 and was sentenced in October 2021 to six months in federal prison, four months of home confinement, three years of supervised release and 200 hours of community service — a lighter sentence than Reiche received. The Bureau of Prisons, where she was register number 19550-509, records her as out of custody on May 20, 2022.
Original charging document and custody limits
Source complaint: The original complaint (No. 2:20-mj-00764-MAT, Document 1) was filed November 30, 2020, and alleges an incident on November 28. Pages 4–6 identify Brooks and Ellen Reiche and report their initial detention. The complaint establishes the original charging date, distinct from any later indictment, but supplies no actual prison admission or release date. The existing November 28 arrest remains; no uninterrupted span to the later Bureau of Prisons release has been inferred. The complaint’s discussion of earlier unidentified shunting incidents is not proof that these defendants committed every earlier incident.
