Bomb victim heading home to Dallas
Posted on 10/15/2002 6:25:26 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Bomb victim heading home to Dallas
TV's 'Most Wanted' to feature half brother sought in attack
10/15/2002
WASHINGTON - Car bomb victim Wright Sigmund is coming home to Dallas, eager to sleep in his own bed and hoping America's Most Wanted can flush out the fugitive half brother he thinks nearly killed him.
"They catch a good amount of people this way," Mr. Sigmund said Monday of the Fox TV show, which plans a segment on the disappearance of his half brother, Scott Sigmund, three days after a pipe bomb exploded in their father's SUV as Wright Sigmund was starting it.
LINDA SPILLERS / Special to the DMN Wright Sigmund talks about his injuries from a pipe bomb blast in July. Sigmund was injured when his father's SUV exploded in a Washington, D.C., garage when he started the ignition. |
"They seem pretty confident, actually, because they don't think Scott is sophisticated enough to hide himself for a long period of time," Mr. Sigmund said of the show's producers. "We'll see, I guess."
America's Most Wanted spokeswoman Kim Newport said the segment, including a re-enactment of the explosion, is scheduled to air Nov. 9.
Federal authorities issued an arrest warrant this month for Scott Sigmund, 34, charging him with interstate transportation of an explosive device with the intent to harm someone. Mr. Sigmund lived in suburban Maryland.
Wright Sigmund, 21, a former St. Mark's School wrestling champion, was left with third-degree burns and other major injuries July 12 when a pipe bomb exploded under him as he started his father's SUV in an underground parking garage in Washington.
Scott Sigmund, married and the father of two young boys, vanished after telling investigators that he would submit to a lie-detector test.
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Authorities later found his car in a suburban Virginia parking garage and a note denying that he had any hand in the bombing. But family members quickly learned that Scott Sigmund had lost his job, run up debts, argued with his father over money and plundered his wife's retirement account.
"Scott had to be behind it in some way, the way he disappeared," Wright Sigmund said.
Wright Sigmund's mother, Dallas psychologist Claire Philips, said taking the story to America's Most Wanted was suggested by frustrated federal investigators.
"The U.S. attorney and the ... [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] suggested that the best way for us to find Scotty was to get his face across the nation," said Mrs. Philips, who has been by her son's side since his first night in the hospital.
"At this point, he could be anywhere, under a false ID, having started a new life," she said.
When he flies back to Dallas next Monday, Wright Sigmund will be closing a traumatic chapter in his young life - two months of pain, surgery and anxiety at Washington Hospital Center, followed by a month of outpatient treatment and rehabilitation.
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But Wright Sigmund's medical travails are far from over, said his mother, who divorced Donald Sigmund in 1983 and raised Wright in Dallas.
After exploratory surgery the day he entered the hospital, doctors had said that little shrapnel had entered Wright Sigmund's body.
Last week, Mrs. Philips said, they found out otherwise.
An MRI and a CT scan performed after Mr. Sigmund complained of pain found "about eight large pieces of shrapnel in his pelvic area," Mrs. Philips said, including one near a major artery. Once he gets to Dallas, he faces surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Even so, Mr. Sigmund has recovered enough that he takes half-hour walks. And he was in good spirits Monday after a weekend spent going to football games and a music club with friends.
At the club, "I danced a little bit, not for that long," he said.
Friends from Washington & Lee University, where Mr. Sigmund should have started his senior year this fall, came up from Lexington, Va., and took him to the school's football game against Catholic University, he said.
"That was fun," he said. "I got to see some of my friends on the football team and say hi."
Sunday, he joined his father's regular tailgate party before the Washington Redskins' game and watched the first half of the 43-27 loss to New Orleans.
But Mr. Sigmund said he was looking forward to getting home to Dallas most of all.
"I'm really excited," he said. "Just to be in my own bed and on familiar territory and everything, it'll be a good change for me."
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