Teen faces WMD charge after plastic egg explodes

Source: AP-Philly.com

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. - An 18-year-old Elizabethtown man is charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction and other offenses over a plastic egg explosion.

Police say he ignited a plastic egg filled with plastic air-gun pellets in a flea market, hitting at least five people and causing alarm. It happened Saturday afternoon at a Saturday's Market in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County.



Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080203_ap_teenfaceswmdchargeafterplasticeggexplodes.html

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The big question is "Where is Saddam hiding those BB laden Easter eggs?"

I'm going to soak my head now. For a very, very, very long time.

--p!

they have egg all over their face for this use of the word mass-destruction.

Seriously, we live in bizarro world as long as the neokooks run the White House.

He said egg.

If you are prove yourself, in which way or form?:loveya: :hugs:

edit: yosef latif...huh?

Please, oh PLEASE has the WarOnTerra finally jumped the shark?

:rofl:

filled with plastic pellet do anything but release a small, mildly toxic cloud when burned?

The act was dumb. The response was jaw-droppingly idiotic.

The pellets were blasted outward when the firework detonated.

:dunce:

Where's Rudy when you really need him?

Rudy would probably be the executioner.

:7

Thanks for the laugh

Thanks for the yolk yuk...

don't get me wrong, I'd have been eggstremely scrambled up if that had put out a child's eye, I realize the kid is a bit hard-boiled in the brain to think that's funny, but to classify this stupid act as a weapon of mass-destruction is horribly misusing the term, and it shouldn't be so lightly tossed around. Shame on them.

:)

love it!

I might order eggs for dinner.


And, no, other people, the situation is not FUNNY, the absurdity of the response is the ridiculous humor-inspiring eggsitement we're enjoying.

We are witnessing the death of satire.

to avoid under responding to a seriously real attack if it ever arrives. seems their brains or priorities are scrambled. in their defense, consider they don't want the yolk to be on them by waiting until all the eggs are hatched to count their terrorists. then again, the Middletowners don't want to be considered chicken, nor have the federal bureau come poaching on local jurisdiction, so they charged this kid so heavily they can crow about a conviction, which is sure to put a feather in the prosecutor's cap and a nice bonus to fatten that nest egg.

seriously, stories like this crack me up.

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php


Clearly a tempest in a teapot. But I guess that's what you get when a bunch of bored low-IQ Security goons are paid to
stand around just itching to help the Torturer-in-Chief "fight the global war on terrah"...

the chickenhawk or the eggscrement?

:crazy:

so we wouldn't have to fight them here.

Turns out they followed us home- by the dozens.

An exploding plastic eggshell was about all Saddam had in the way of WMDs too, but that didn't stop us from trashing his country. I'm surprised the stormtroopers didn't launch a cruise missle at the kid's parents house, "just in case."

I guess I always knew these "anti-terror" laws were really meant to be used on us all along, I just never thought they'd be used in such a Keystone Kops fashion.

death through panic. Remember the stampede on the bridge in Iraq that killed over 1000? There wasn't even a bomb in that one. Just people saying that there was. I have no sympathy for this loser.

Look. I work in NYC. If this asshole had tried this on a number 4 train at 8:30 in the morning: a) god knows how many people would have been trampled or had heart attacks and b) he would have been beaten to death by a hysterical mob.

Setting things off in spaces like flea markets is not cool; Throw the book at hit.

He's not in NY. He's in a flea market in PA. It was dumb. It definently didn't merit being called a WMD. How many of these types of things do kids do daily? Probably 1000's across the nation.

And I'm rather shocked at the sympathy being exhibited toward him here. The man detonated a cherry bomb surrounded with shrapnel in a crowded market (the article doesn't explain how it exploded, but it actually had an exploding firework in the middle). The fact that the whole thing was contained in a cute egg shell really isn't relevant, nor is the fact that the shrapnel consisted of Airsoft pellets...they are rock hard, were launched initially at several hundred FPS, and were FLAMING.

This wasn't a kid setting off a firecracker or a stinkbomb in a store. He is an adult who built a fragmentary explosive that could have easily injured and blinded someone, or caused a major fire. The fact that he didn't was luck, not a sign that it was an innocent prank.

I built and set off plenty of firecrackers when I was a kid, and made a handful of very large bombs that could have easily killed me. All were set off well away from homes and people. This idiot made an explosive, surrounded it with potential projectiles, and set it off in a crowded market. There is a HUGE difference between the two. One is youthful mischief, the other is a desire to injure and maim.

As legally defined, yes, it's WMD. The problem is that our legal definition of WMD is screwy in this country. WMD are supposed to be weapons capable of KILLING large numbers of people. 5 sticks of dynamite in a busy shopping mall would meet both the legal AND the classical definition, because a bomb like that could easily mow down 30-40 people and injure a couple hundred more on a busy day.

The problem is that the statutes in the U.S. were written to cover ANY explosive capable of killing OR INJURING more than ONE person. So yes, it's LEGALLY WMD in the United States, but it doesn't meet the classical definition of WMD as the term was intended. WMD, in a domestic sense, should be reserved for things like the Unabomber and the guys who blew up the Ok federal building.

IMO, the kid shouldn't be facing WMD charges, but he should be facing felony assault charges for each person within range, and attempted murder charges for anyone within a few feet of the device. He should also be facing federal explosives charges for assembling an illegal anti-personnell weapon.

But WMD? No, that's just stupid.

hence mass destruction as opposed to the destruction that, say, an ordinary 2000-lb bomb could cause. They have plenty of very big bombs in Iraq, but they did NOT have WMD's...

Diluting that term until it now refers to firecrackers and (elsewhere) non-automatic .22 target rifles makes it absolutely meaningless.

If a firecracker wrapped with BB's is "WMD", then what the hell are we supposed to call nukes?

The term was first used to describe the attack on Guernica in the 1930's...which was carried out using normal aircraft mounted bombs. It originally meant any weapon capable of killing a large number of innocent people, especially when it is known that their use cannot distinguish between innocent civilian targets and legitimate military targets. A 2000 lb bomb would have qualified nicely, as would a can of mustard gas, because both of those weapons have uncontrollable and large areas of devastation when they are used. When a weapon is powerful enough that it's use is virtually certain to harm innocents in the area, even when striking legitimate military targets, it becomes a WMD. The term became associated with nukes during the Cold War for obvious reasons (especially in the U.S.), but the internationally recognized definition has always simply been any weapon capable of killing or severely injuring large numbers of innocent people in a single use. Nukes are simply the most extreme example of WMD's.

Oh, and one other thing you may have noticed about this definition. WMD's, up until 9/11, have always been used to refer to military weapons deployed by either a military group or a terrorist group. It was neaver intended for weapons that had NO military use or military targets. If a terrorist group launches 5 heavy trucks loaded with 10,000 lbs of explosives at government targets, knowing that the bombs will kill nearby civilians, those would actually qualify as WMD's. If some lone nut builds a 10,000 lb bomb and drives it into a school "just because", it's not a WMD, it's plain old fashioned murder.

Obviously, a firecracker with some AirSoft pellets should NOT qualify.

Misdemeanor Disorderly conduct. The most I can see here is a couple misdemeanor charges. Some DA could push it to Felony assault I guess in a sane world. But the environment of fear that has been created along with police state power result in teens being charged with "WMD" when the weapon in question is CLEARLY not anything like a WMD.

For all those out there who have your noses out of joint and keep saying that you will either stay home or vote Independent rather than vote for a Democratic nominee that isn't your candidate, just imagine what another eight years of a Republican Administration will twist our nation into.

The MOST important thing to do, if you really want to put sanity and American values, back into government and society is to Vote Democrat for President and all Reps and Senatorial races in November. Our country needs us!

BTW, isn't it strange that an anagram of "George W. Bush" is...

In many places, this would be some sort of petty weapons charge, mischief, public endangerment, vandalism to the flea market premises and shops, etc.


Weapons of mass destruction are nuclear, chemical, and biological - this was none of the three. Yes, he should be penalized for the act that could have hurt someone, but to lump him in with Osama & crew is absurd. Absolutely absurd.

the man has also been charged with creulty when investigators found more than a dozen severely dehydrated Peeps in his home. Forensic food scientists have seized his microwave in a search for additional evidence.

Remember, your crime is what THEY say it is.

and maybe build an embassy.

It replaced the older and highly descriptive term "Nuclear-Biological-Chemical" I suppose because 'NBC' wasn't nearly scary-sounding enough (unless you were CBS). But now WMD is so over-used as to be useless. I thought it had gone too far when chemical and bio weapons were lumped into the WMD category. Chems and bios can be weapons of mass death, true enough, but they don't destroy a damned thing. But with this story, now virtually anything that might harm anyone in any manner is apparently a WMD.

This has gone the way of the US's new 21st century definition of terrorism, which seems to be "the use of violence by anyone I don't like against anyone I do like."

And it works pretty good too.

OMG!!! THE EASTER BUNNY IS COMING!!!!!

at least the bullets were plastic. The crowd could have been poached if he'd used metal.

I've noticed on the news lately that every wife beater, child abuser, and graffiti artist is also charged with "terroristic threats."

What happened to this great nation?

I saw it on Myth Busters.