Joseph Capitanio of Massachusetts learned the hard way that there’s a fine line between an awesome firecracker and a bomb. He also learned that toddlers like to talk. That combination of events have now put the 33-year-old man on probation for the next two years.
As The Berkshire Eagle reports, back in March 2015 Capitanio was in his garage, trying to make a “large firecracker” by tooling around with explosives in his garage. His attorney, Jill Sheldon, says Capitanio was inspired to make the firecracker-turned-bomb after having “seen one built on television.” It’s not clear, as of this writing, what TV show Capitanio was watching that went into detail about how to make firecrackers/bombs at home (usually one turns to YouTube for that sort of thing).
Authorities said Capitanio was trying to build a bomb by placing gunpowder into a CO2 canister. Instead of trying to crimp the open end shut, he tried to seal it with a blowtorch. You can imagine what happened next.
When police arrived a short time after the blast – the sound of the bomb exploding apparently sounded like a gunshot to whoever called the cops – they expected to find a gunshot victim. Instead, they found Capitanio, injured by the shrapnel from his own bomb. They also found his two-year-old son, who ratted his dad out.
“Big Boom. Daddy uh-oh.”
Making matters worse, Capitanio’s bomb-making shenanigans made him a laughingstock in the media: news reports referred to the hapless homemade bomb-maker as “Daddy Uh-oh.” Even his own lawyer admitted that the bomb-making adventure was “one of the dumbest things he’s done”
As it turns out, however, making bombs at home is not a laughing matter, as far as Massachusetts authorities are concerned, especially when you’re in a home with other people in it and your shenanigans put them at risk. Capitanio was charged with possession of an infernal machine, possession of ammunition without a firearms identification card and reckless endangerment of a child. He pleaded guilty to those charges in October, 2015, and was sentenced last week.
Both the defense and prosecutors agreed that Capitanio wasn’t trying to hurt anyone with his bomb, but they had differing views on just how severely the court should punish his failure to think things through. First Assistant Berkshire District Attorney Paul J. Caccaviello wanted Capitanio sentenced to 18 months in jail, which would be suspended while “Daddy Uh-oh” completed two years’ probation. The defense wanted the case continued without cause for two years, after which the charges would be dropped if Capitanio stayed out of trouble.
The judge sided with the prosecution, and sentenced the homemade bomb-maker to two years’ probation. He’ll be required to attend counseling during that time.
Joseph Capitanio is not the first person to learn the hard way that making fireworks is best left to the professionals (or that trying to modify them at home is a recipe for disaster). YouTube is filled with videos of “fireworks fails” or “homemade fireworks gone bad,” and would-be pyrotechnicians are lucky to get off with a scare and some minor discoloration to the face, like the guy in the video below.
Besides being dangerous, making incendiary devices at home is also a crime in many jurisdictions, especially if you’re doing it in your garage where you risk sending shrapnel hither and yon, like Joseph Capitanio did.
[Image via Shutterstock/Tawin Mukdharakosa]
Joseph Capitanio: Bomb-Making Dad Gets Turned In By Toddler Son, Gets Probation is an article from: The Inquisitr News