[RedBloodedAmerican]

IMO they should have made the effort to get it off him. He was cuffed next to the car.

Wasn't posted, couldnt find this doing a search.

[OXENinFLA]

This is strange?

Who put the bomb on him?

[sirchtruth]

My post to the OTHER thread was:

What happened to the pizza?!

[strela]

Did he work for Bombinos?

[OXENinFLA]

http://goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030831/FRONTPAGE/108310359

By Gerry Weiss
gerry.weiss@timesnews.com


Erie FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge said investigators are confident they will soon solve the mystery behind the bizarre bombing death of Brian Wells.

Rudge met for nine hours on Saturday with a multi-agency task force that included law-enforcement officials from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Pennsylvania State Police, the Erie County District Attorney's Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"We are looking into every facet of the incident and are conducting a complete, thorough and meticulous investigation," Rudge said Saturday night.

The task force will resume its investigation this morning when they meet at Erie's FBI office, 717 State St.

Remnants of the bomb that killed Wells Thursday afternoon on upper Peach Street were flown out of Erie Saturday to the FBI lab in Quantico, W. Va.

"We don't know yet as to why the bomb detonated or how it detonated," Rudge said. "That will be the focus when we get the forensics back from Quantico."

Rudge did not say when results of those tests would be available.

Wells, a 46-year-old pizza delivery man from Millcreek, told police he had been forced to rob the PNC Bank in Summit Towne Centre and asked authorities to help him minutes before a bomb strapped to his chest exploded and killed him.

Wells had left Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria, 5154 Peach St., to deliver two pizzas to a location at 8631 Peach St., a remote and rural area that leads to a television transmission tower.

No arrests have been made in the case, and authorities have not identified anyone as suspects.

WJET-TV captured audio and video from Wells as he sat handcuffed in front of a state police cruiser in an upper Peach Street business driveway.

"Why is nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" Wells asked police. "It's going to go off. I'm not lying."

Rudge said the bomb appeared to have hung from Wells' neck. Rudge declined to comment on the specifics of the bomb.

No one else was hurt in Thursday's explosion, which happened in front of law enforcement officers as they waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

Rudge said Wells entered the PNC bank and produced an "extensive note" demanding money and saying he had a bomb. Rudge would not provide any details about the note. Rudge also would not say if any money was recovered at the scene.

"We are confident, through what is an ongoing and extremely elaborate investigation, that we will solve this," Rudge said Saturday night.

Results from an autopsy performed Friday on Wells were not available Saturday. Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook was out of town Saturday and could not be reached for comment.

For those traumatized by the incident, the American Red Cross has assembled its Disaster Mental Health team to visit Peach Street businesses in the vicinity of the bombing.

Psychiatrists Bob Dowling and Judith Fair, among the team's members, left information at various businesses to help employees and others understand their reactions to traumatic events.

[csvset]

A similar article is here. I'm pointing this out not as a thread nanny, just some additional info was posted.

My question is why wasn't the bomb found when the State Police frisked him prior to cuffing him? You'd think that they'd have frisked him.

That being said, I believe Columbian terrorists use a tactic of attaching bombs to people. Those bombs however are usually plainly visable, usually something akin to a "collar" placed around the victim's neck.

FBI: Man killed by bomb after bank robbery (Oops!)

[OXENinFLA]

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030829/NEWS02/108290360

Incident closes busy Peach Street-Title

The incident they are talking about is, of course, A MAN THAT WAS FORCED TO ROB A BANK W/ A BOMB STRAPPED TO HIS CHEST EXPLODES, while waiting for the bobm squad....Gheese. This guy get killed, and all these people care about is the Traffic?

[mikegi]

Was the guy really an innocent victim? I can imagine this scenario: pizza delivery guy in his 40s decides to commit the perfect bank robbery. He makes it look like some customer forced him to do it. No need for an alibi - he's a victim, too. All the while, he leaves the money sitting in the woods somewhere for later retrieval.

I expect the guy's story to fall in pieces after an investigation.

[ChemistCat]

If someone put a bomb on me and told me to go rob a bank, and the bomb had a TIMER rather than a remote trigger, and I KNEW that, there's no WAY I'd go rob the bank. I'd go get help to get the thing off before time's-up!!!!!

So that's what I don't get. 9/11 should have taught us to NEVER cooperate with evil. Die trying, but never do what the bad guy wants you to do.

[OXENinFLA]

Fox just F'd up on this story.

Julian P. Just said this guy was intercepted BEFORE he got to the bank, not true.

The bank called the cops. and gave them his plate #'s

[MissAmericanPie]

They had 40 mins to get it off of him and they did nothing?

[baltodog]

While no one has been arrested or identified as a suspect, Rudge said the investigation was "going extremely well."

Right. And besides the fact that my 89 Caravan was creamed by an Excursion and had to be "put down", it gets very good gas mileage right now.

[MattAMiller]

Sounds like a movie plot. And while I was watching that movie I'd be thinking "There's no way the cops wouldn't look for a bomb if the guy said he had one." Somebody ought to lose their job, probably a whole bunch of somebodies.

[rabidralph]

Just like in that movie Phone Booth with Colin Farrel. There's a dead pizza delivery guy in that one too, who is mistakenly believed to be the sniper in the movie.

[The Duke]

It seems to me that people are really using tortured logic to excuse the police from blatant cowardice in this incident. Obviosly the victim was innocent, because had he been the robber himself a fake bomb would have been employed - which would have been every bit as effective and much easiser to produce.

[boris]

"IMO they should have made the effort to get it off him."

If events unfolded as he claimed, the bomb might have had an 'anti-tamper' device such that any attempt to remove would cause it to detonate...The cops surely would have considered this possibility.

--Boris

[TomGuy]

This happened Thursday.

FoxNews is treating it like breaking news.

Where was the story for the past 2 days?

[cardinal4]

Remnants of the bomb that killed Wells Thursday afternoon on upper Peach Street were flown out of Erie Saturday to the FBI lab in Quantico, W. Va.

Last time I checked, Quantico was in Virginia, right of I-95, 50 miles south of DC..

[wildbill]

Would make a hell of a plot for a movie.

[weegee]

While this crime is highly unusual it is not unusual for a pizza delivery man to be called to an address simply to be robbed (and killed). It's happened a number of times.

[floriduh voter]

This thread has more info on the pizza and the pizza delivery guy.