He may not have intended to kill himself, radio waves could have set off his devise before he could get it into place
My tin foil hat says they detonated it remotely, because he was the money for the bomb or the brains for the bomb, but wanted someone else to carry it...
meaning, he didn't know they were going to blow him up, he thought he was just a delivery boy.
Everyone open yer cell phone owners manual if ya have one, check the "warnings" regarding cellular phones and blasting operations....common hazard of EMR near electro-explosive devices (EED's) and blasting operations was one of our primary concerns as well as any portable transciever within 300 feet of a suspect device before it was rendered safe.
Hopefully this "engineer" had his cell phone on when he armed his IED........ IMO per the nooooze reports and such his actions suggest he was gonna take some folks with him.....
Just my opinion of course...nothing more.
Re: " radio waves could have set off his devise before he could get it into place"
Yup; it's called "induction".
Sometimes it happens by accident, when the wavelength of a particular signal happens to coencide with the length of one of the det wires. Usually a strong, fairly close transmission.
I would expect that at least one radio station would have been doing a "remote" from the game, as well as a lot of Police / Security traffic.
Or... it just might have been an Angel.
Either way; Thanks be to God, Zeus, Bhudda, Brahmman, or whoever was on deity duty that night, that the only casualty was the looney perp.
This sounds like a "work accident." It is entirely possible that he was trying to plant a bomb somewere -- the botany/microbiology building was nearby and would be a logical target for an ELF eco-terrorist.
The fact that he had significant stockpiles of explosives in his apartment make it look less likely that he intended to be a suicide bomber.
He might have thought that security would be diverted to the football game, so he could slip into any building on campus without discovery.