Results tagged “dynamite”

You may recall the sad, stupid saga of (former) maintenance man Robert Lopez, who was arrested in 2007 while sitting on the stoop of his apartment building with some fake sticks of dynamite he found in the trash. Lopez had brought the cartoonish-looking "bomb" home from work with the intention of making a piggy bank out of it, but when a concerned transit worker called the cops, his ridiculous legal nightmare began.

One day in June 2007, maintenance man Robert Lopez was taking out the trash at the Cadman Towers in Brooklyn Heights when he found some fake dynamite sticks attached to a clock. "I thought it was cool," he tells the Times, and so he took it home to make a piggy bank out of it. That idea landed him in Riker's Island (where inmates called him the "Mad Bomber") and an indictment on charges of "placing a false bomb or hazardous substance," a felony that carries up to four years in prison. A transit worker had spotted him carrying the fake dynamite and called police, who arrested him outside his Fort Greene apartment. Which he no longer rents; he lost his job and he's been homeless for a month. Sometimes he cleans a McDonald's in Brooklyn. Sad enough yet? In a teary interview with the Times, he explains, "On 9/11, from my roof of my building I could see the top of the towers smoking... I’m not a terrorist. I wouldn’t hurt nobody like that. Never." The Brooklyn D.A. isn't convinced, and Lopez is due back in court on Wednesday.