The Associated Press
Erie, Pa. (AP) -- A pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank, then was killed by a bomb fastened around his neck, was told he had just 55 minutes to disarm the explosive, according to details from a coroner’s report.
Brian Wells, 46, died shortly after the Aug. 28 robbery. He told police who apprehended him that he had been forced to rob the bank by someone who locked the collar bomb around his neck.
Authorities surrounded Wells and were waiting for a bomb squad to arrive when the device detonated.
The report by the Erie County Coroner’s Office includes previously unreleased details about the crime, including instructions in a letter that Wells said he was given by an unknown group of people who locked the bomb onto him, the Erie Times-News reported in Sunday’s editions.
“The subject was given 55 minutes to rob the bank and follow the remainder of the written directions, which included an elaborate scheme of traveling from one location to another to find additional instructions on what action to perform next, where to leave the money he had stolen and how to safely disarm the explosive device in order to save his life,” the report said.
The FBI has declined to release many of those details, although agents have said that the instructions Wells received in the handwritten letters were too complicated to complete before the bomb exploded.
The coroner’s report does differ in one respect from what Wells told troopers that day: The report said that Wells told authorities a group forced him to wear the bomb, even though Wells referred only to an unknown “he” as he pleaded with police to remove the collar that day.
“He pulled a key out and started a timer,” Wells can be heard telling troopers on a video taken by WJET-TV. “I heard the thing ticking when he did it.”
The FBI has not ruled out that Wells participated in the scheme to rob the bank, which has angered Wells’ family. Special Agent Bob Rudge, who heads the FBI office in Erie, declined comment on the coroner’s report.