Slate Belt man eyed in late-night blasts gets prison time for weapons offenses
A Northampton County man who prosecutors said used a drone to drop explosives near his ex-girlfriend’s house was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison on weapons charges.
U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Leeson said there was too much speculation in the aerial bombardment claim to back up the prosecution’s position it warranted a tougher sentence for Jason Muzzicato.
But Leeson said he was so troubled by the facts of the case and Muzzicato’s failure to accept responsibility for his actions that he added three months to the maximum sentence recommended under federal sentencing guidelines.
Muzzicato, 45, pleaded guilty in December to possession of firearms while he was subject to a protection from abuse order, possessing unregistered firearms and flying an unregistered aircraft.
Police and federal agents arrested Muzzicato in June 2019 after raiding his home in Washington Township and his auto shop in Bangor. They were investigating a string of late-night explosions across the Slate Belt that rattled neighbors for months.
The searches turned up numerous guns and ammunition that Muzzicato wasn’t allowed to have because his ex-girlfriend, Cassandra Smith, had a protection from abuse order against him.
They also found two drones and several homemade explosives, two of which fit the FBI’s definition of destructive devices because they were made to produce shrapnel, an agent testified Thursday.
FBI Special Agent Benjamin Jacobs testified that similar devices were found around the neighborhood, and one contained DNA later found to match Muzzicato’s. Video from Smith’s landlord taken in April 2017 showed a seemingly spontaneous explosion in the street in front of the property.
Noting no cars or people were seen in the video, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kishan Nair said “It could only have come from one place, and that’s from above.”
But defense attorney John Waldron seized on the FBI agent’s testimony that two memory cards that should have contained records of the drone’s flight were blank when investigators analyzed them. Muzzicato testified that the app used to control the drones also records details of their flights and denied flying them over Smith’s home.
“There’s no denying anywhere the drone has flown. It’s in the app,” he said.
Muzzicato also testified that he had guns in the house because he had been subject to harassment, including damage to his vehicles and those of customers at his garage.
He claimed Smith dropped off a man armed with a knife near his house to menace him, and that the man fled when Muzzicato brandished a toy cap gun. When he tried to get help from Washington Township police, nothing happened.
Waldron also argued that Muzzicato’s range of possible sentences should be reduced because only five of the guns found in the home he shared with his mother and adult son belonged to him. Muzzicato’s son, Colin, testified that three of the rifles were his.
Finding that Muzzicato had access to all of the guns and that some of the homemade bombs also counted as firearms under the law, Leeson rejected the argument.
Smith testified it was she who lived in fear during years of harassment from Muzzicato, whom she dated for about three years.
She urged Leeson to look past Muzzicato’s family’s statements that he was respected in the community and helped elderly customers by reducing their car repair bills if they couldn’t pay.
“Just like any domestic violence case, nobody knows the monster but the victim,” Smith said.