Loner handed 15 years for Manchester-style bomb he lef t on Tube
A DELUDED loner who planted a bomb on the Tube was jailed for 15 years yesterday as a judge said commuters escaped injury or death only by luck.
Damon Smith, 20, built a shrapnel bomb with chilling similarities to the one which killed 22 in Manchester.
The former altar boy was obsessed with explosives and had fallen into the thrall of Islamic State propaganda online. But his device, made from sparklers, a fairy light and a pound of ball bearings, failed to detonate on London’s Jubilee Line.
Despite his interest in violent Islam, Smith escaped being charged with terrorist offences because the authorities could not prove he had been radicalised.
Smith’s mother Antonitza yesterday blamed his Asperger’s syndrome and insisted he was ‘just a vulnerable little boy’. She added: ‘Damon’s not a killer – he’s a good boy. You know he’s not a terrorist. He just made a smoke bomb and the prank went wrong.
‘And now he’s paying for it. To be in the same context as the Manchester killer – it’s awful really.
‘He’s got a good character. He’s just a vulnerable little boy who needs a bit of help, not prison. I asked, “why did you do it?” and he said, “Mum, I only wanted to make a smoke bomb”.’
But a psychologist found the autistic undergraduate, known for his distinctive squeaky voice and inappropriate smiling, had been ‘indulging in sadistic fantasies’. Ordering him to start his sentence in a young offenders’ institution, Judge Richard Marks QC said bloodshed was averted only by chance.
‘It was entirely fortuitous, as events turned out, that – contrary to your expectation and intention – the device did not explode,’ he said at the Old Bailey. ‘If there had been successful ignition of the material in the sealed flask, it would have been capable of causing the flask to rupture, projecting the metal fragments and ball bearings outwards.
‘This would have had the potential to cause serious injury and damage within the length of the carriage. Quite what your motives were and what your true thinking was in acting as you did is difficult to discern with any degree of clarity or certainty.’
Referring to the horrific attack in Manchester this week, the judge added: ‘The seriousness of what you did cannot be overstated, not least against a background of the fear in which we all live.’ Judge Marks said Smith, who smiled in the dock as he was sentenced, was a danger to the public because of his unpredictable behaviour and weapons obsession.
Smith sparked a massive counter-terrorism operation when he left a holdall containing the bomb on a Tube carriage last October. The bag was handed to the driver who discovered its contents as he drove into North Greenwich station, triggering an evacuation.
Smith was arrested in the street 24 hours later and claimed his actions were simply a prank inspired by his favourite YouTube channel Trollstation.
But a jury ruled he was guilty of explosives offences after hearing how meticulously the device had been constructed. Bomb-making materials were found at the family home in Rotherhithe, south-east London, and another device was discovered in the loft of his grandparents’ former home in Newton Abbot, Devon.
Commander Dean Haydon, of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: ‘The bomb Smith made was a viable device, but it failed to detonate, which was our good fortune.’