Man made makeshift ‘explosive’
AN ‘eccentric’ amateur chemist has been jailed after hanging a makeshift explosive from his window to scare his neighbours.
David Thomas Harvey made the matchbox-sized device in his home laboratory in Droylsden, Tameside.
He hung the ‘unsophisticated’ black box device from an upstairs window while his neighbours were in the garden next door, prompting them to quickly usher their children indoors.
The bizarre incident unfolded just four days after the Manchester Arena terror attack, which killed 22 innocent people and injured many more.
Harvey, 54, wanted to ‘teach his neighbours a lesson’ after a dispute which ran over several years, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard. He has now been jailed for three years and four months after pleading guilty to making an explosive device.
The leaflet distributor, of Greenside Lane, Droylsden, has also been handed a lifetime restraining order against his neighbour Anthony Topping.
While searching his house police found a ‘homemade laboratory’ as well as two books on bomb making, leaflets about how to blow things up and newspaper clippings about the London 7/7 bombing. The device had been designed to explode and would have made a loud bang or firework noise, but was not detonated.
Prosecutor Helen Longworth told the court that Mr Topping had been in his garden on May 26 when he saw a wire being dropped out of an upstairs window attached to the black box.
“He immediately thought it was a bomb and thought he might be trying to fire nails over the fence,” she said.
The dad rushed his children inside and called the police. Ms Longworth added: “Harvey pulled it back inside and shouted it was ‘just wires’”.
When forensics officers arrived they found that the box was heavily taped with wires protruding from one corner. It contained 6g of crushed match heads and a single flashbulb.
Specialists said the device would have caused a ‘loud bang and potential for harm to those in close proximity.’ Harvey was arrested later that evening.
In a witness statement Mr Topping said he had struggled to get along with Harvey since he had moved to the house three years ago. David Morton, representing Harvey, said the defendant had lived at the house since he was born and had lived alone since the death of his parents.
Judge Jonathan Foster QC told Harvey his actions meant police resources had to be diverted at a time of ‘heightened concern about terrorist activity’ just days after the Manchester Arena bombing. He said: “I don’t label you as terrorist nor are you charged under terrorist legislation. I class you as a rather eccentric man.”