Fireworks anyone?
By bhbirdie6
@bhbirdie6 (1765)
United States
October 24, 2006 8:58pm CST
There's ordinary foolishness, and then there's extraordinary foolishness. Stealing fireworks from a storage depot is foolishness. But using a welder's torch to cut through the wall of the building housing the fireworks -- that is extraordinary foolishness.
Several burglars pushed their luck to the brink of failure when they tried to pull off a heist of a building containing a large volume of fireworks. They used a gas cutting torch to slice through the main door. The door was eight feet tall, concrete, and reinforced with a solid inch of steel. Just as the torch penetrated the door, and success was at hand... a spark landed in a crate of fireworks inside.
Fireworks are explosive, and this particular crate contained the equivalent of a hundred pounds of gunpowder. The entire factory exploded. The door was popped from its hinges and slammed flat into the ground. The roof lifted off and landed in one piece. Interestingly, despite the violence of the explosion, the debris was confined within the factory perimeter.
Astoundingly, the perpetrators were not killed, and have never been found. Their cutting equipment remained behind, along with the car, which had been flattened by the concrete roof. Flabbergasted pyrotechnics professionals have dubbed them the "Hole in the Ground Gang."
3 responses
@bhbirdie6 (1765)
• United States
25 Oct 06
I agree. I think most criminals are actually very dumb and it's only the few that are smart.
@bhbirdie6 (1765)
• United States
25 Oct 06
Sometimes people do really stupid things. A lot of times intelligence has nothing to do with it. However, they didn't get caught so I guess that's a plus for them... or just a really stupid investigative department at the local police station. They did leave their car after all... fingerprints? License plate? Papers? Vin #? You'd think the cops would be able to figure it out...