Ryan Barton, 20, was arrested in Wheeling after a police officer spotted a pipe bomb in his backpack. (Credit: Wheeling Police Department)
Cops find an explosive backpack surprise that man says he’d been carrying around for years.
WHEELING, Ill. (AP) - Police in the suburban Wheeling say an Arlington Heights man caught with a pipe bomb in his backpack told them he had been carrying it for two years.
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Wheeling Police Chief Bill Benson tells the Daily Herald that an officer stopped 20-year-old Ryan Barton as he was walking down a street late one night last week to question him about some recent car burglaries. Benson says Barton had no connection with the burglaries, but the officer arrested him after seeing the pipe bomb in the backpack Barton had voluntarily opened.
The device was disabled by the Cook County Bomb Squad.
Barton, who was charged with a weapons count, reportedly said he had been carrying the bomb for about two years, but did not say why.
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