Was there a pizza guy who had a bomb on his neck?

Answer 1

Yes, the event occurred in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 2003. The man was Brian Douglas Wells, a Pizza delivery man who went to a bank with a bomb wrapped around his neck, claimed that other people had forced him to rob the bank and threatened to explode the bomb if he did not comply.

Mr. Wells was videotaped by local media as he sat on the ground, while police tried to determine their next action. Before a bomb team could arrive, the bomb exploded and killed him.

Based on Mr. Wells' statements, it was believed a person or persons had lured Mr. Wells to deliver a pizza to them, and then forced him to wear the bomb and carry out the bank robbery.

However, in 2007, federal prosecutors charged that Mr. Wells was a co-conspirator, and that he planned the bank robbery along with alleged defendants Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes.

On December 4, 2008, Barnes was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was found guilty on November 1, 2010 and will be sentenced in February 2011. Barnes stated that Mr. Wells at first thought the bomb would be a fake, and that when Wells discovered that the bomb was real, his accomplices fired a gun to threaten Wells into continuing with the bank heist.

News reports stated that Wells had a low IQ and was likely duped into participating in the robbery. Other people maintain he was an innocent victim who was murdered by the defendants when the bomb accidentally exploded. Whether Wells was a willing participant or not in the bank robbery, his traumatic death by explosives was certainly the harshest "sentence" among the people involved in this incident.

This incident has been dubbed the "collar-bomb" by news outlets.