Houston, February 28:
A high school teenager is being held in custody in US until the court determines whether he is a danger to the community following charges that he used internet information to build seven bombs that exploded at different locations during the last two weeks.
18-year-old Michael Ranelli pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to placing and throwing explosives and weapons of mass destruction in the city of Lynn, near Boston. “Your honour , if you want I will go down to probation every single day,” he told Lynn District Court Judge James Wexler during the hearing on Friday.
His lawyer Kevin Foley said his client is scared to death, and is still in high school. He says Ranelli ranks top five in his class at the Lynn Vocational Technical Institute and is studying automotive.
Prosecutors say he ordered chemicals to make the bombs online, then fashioned homemade bombs using cardboard rolls and fuses. Prosecutors said the devices were “as strong as a stick of dynamite.”
The latest explosion happened overnight on February 21 in front of 6 Bowler Street in Lynn. Nobody was injured.
Judge Wexler ordered Ranelli held without bail in the Essex House of Correction in Middleton until Tuesday when Ranelli will return to the district court for a dangerousness hearing.
Foley, Ranelli’s lawyer, argued that the accused’s age and absence of a criminal record were grounds to release him on bail, but Wexler cited the seriousness of the charges in ordering him held.
“These were very powerful devices,” assistant district attorney Susan Dolhun said of the bombs. Dolhun added that the charges are punishable by up to two and a half years in a house of correction and 10 to 25 years in state prison.
Gerald Ranelli, the accused’s father, said his son was “very sorry” . “It was just a prank. He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody,” he said.
-Agencies