Swampscott boy, 13, hurt by homemade bomb

Salem (MA) News ^ | 05/02/08 | Bruno Matarazzo Jr

[raccoonradio]

>>by a homemade bomb

Why, he was just going for his Bomb Making Boy Scout Merit Badge.

>>rescue workers could find only one of the fingertips.

Ah, "Fingertips (Pt 1)". Stevie Wonder.

>>"First, he was screaming for five minutes," said his brother, Michael, 17, "He said, 'I can't believe I blew off my fingers.'"

Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!

Gee, you make a bomb, it goes off, and it blows off your fingertips. What a surprise.

>>Police had been called to the same part of town, just steps from the Lynn line, on Saturday for a report of a loud explosion..."Investigators are determining if the same person was responsible for each explosion"

I'm guessing it is.

>>Police treated the home as a crime scene

Improvised explosive device--does al Queda have a cell in Swampscott, MA?

>>This isn't the first time local police have dealt with the premature explosion of homemade bombs made by teenagers.

Yes, yes, it's a common occurance I guess! Just a typical teenage activity.

[353FMG]

Am I being insensitive when I say that everyone making homemade bombs should have his fingers blown off or worse?

[SF Republican]

I did that with gunpowder from firecrackers (this was in the 60’s) and a BB shot container, it was a not so little stick of gunpowder, I did in the woods though not in the house, it did make a big boom - I still have my fingertips.

[raccoonradio]

As someone on the Salem News website noted (comments) he will be reminded of his stupid move every time he goes to use his mutilated hand..

[Squawk 8888]

the bomb contained gunpowder from about 100 toy caps that was placed inside a cardboard container with duct tape wrapped around it.

This is pretty tame stuff- I'm guessing that the "fingertips" that he lost were just chunks of skin. A painful lesson about the dangers of using "contact" explosives but he'll recover. At least he was smart enough to use cardboard- a lot of kids use steel or copper pipes.

[Richard Kimball]

Yeah, you’re also a jerk. Kids have been making stuff from firecrackers, caps and stuff for years. Most of them aren’t doing anything evil.

[ZGuy]

Typical teenage kid. Hopefully he won’t be maimed for life — not by the homemade fireworks, he’ll live with that, but by being charged with some crime and given a criminal record and possibly being sent to juvenile hall — for being a kid.

[robomatik]

some teenage boys are risk-takers looking for a thrill. 20 years ago, when i was a teenager, i did some idiotic things too. i’m still surprised i made it to adulthood. i thank God i made it past those times.

[Pete]

In the 70’s, we used match heads pressed into a copper pipe. My friend was closing off one end of the pipe in his garage when it went off. Shot clean through the garage wall. We told him he was an idiot. He had been closing off the one end by banging it with a hammer.

[ClearCase_guy]

“You mess with the bull, you get the horns. I used to have a clever hand signal that goes with that expression, but ... ah ... I don’t use it anymore ... because ... well, I just don’t use it.”

[lesser_satan]

Stick to Tannerite, kids. Legal and much safer.

[skeeter]

Agreed. We used to make 'bombs' alot more powerful than the one this kid was making & used em to blow up beehives in a local orchard (smart). All that ended when one detonated in the hand of a buddy - he lost more of his hand than this kid did - shrapnel killed his pet cat, too.

It took him a year and a half of grafts and therapy to regain partial use of his hand. A tough lesson.

[robomatik]

p.s. when i was in high school, my chemistry professor demonstrated the capability of thermite by melting a hole through a layer of steel. today, homeland security would probably whisk him away.

[rlmorel]

I did much more than that both as a kid and a teenager...

I count myself thankful that I didn’t injure myself seriously.

Kids do stupid and risky things. Some don’t make it through intact or at all. They are just being kids, and some are unlucky.

[Richard Kimball]

He had been closing off the one end by banging it with a hammer.

I saw Daffy Duck do that once. We had some kids in our neighborhood make some pretty awesome potato guns.

[raccoonradio]

Didn’t Joe Kennedy (RFK’s son, former MA Congressmen)
nearly blow off his kids’ fingers with some fireworks once?

(ah, the wonders of search:
>>The five-term congressman, the eldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, had been regarded until last spring as all-but unbeatable in next year’s gubernatorial election. But messy publicity about the annulment of his first marriage, the alleged affair of his brother Michael with a teen-age babysitter and stories of his playing with illegal fireworks that burned his 16-year-old son have combined this year to smudge the image of the heir apparent to the Kennedy dynasty.

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N38/kennedy.38w.html

[ClearCase_guy]

Kids do stupid and risky things. Some don’t make it through intact or at all. They are just being kids, and some are unlucky.

The lucky ones are the ones whose parents drop them 50-ft off a tower. That sets the stage for a life of successful risk-taking.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Police had been called to the same part of town, just steps from the Lynn line, on Saturday for a report of a loud explosion.

Lynn, Lynn
City of Sin
You never come back the
Same as you went in

[Joe 6-pack]

Where I grew up in Western PA, virtually every kid had dad and/or grandpap's carbide lamp and fuel in the basement. We knew it was potentially explosive and NEVER, EVER played around with it. You could've blown up a TV with it in a bright flash of light and flying glass shards, or launch a miner's helmet 40 feet in the air. Nope. We NEVER played around with that stuff.

[processing please hold]

I did that with gunpowder from firecrackers

So did I. I emptied the powder out into a mound and struck a match to it. Being a little girl at the time my reflexes and knowledge on gunpowder were zero. OUCH!!! is an understatement. But, I stopped using a match to ignite it. lol