A couple of things about Norman Frey seem important from the beginning.
First, Colorado Bureau of Investigation records show he was missing a joint on one of his fingers before a balloon full of acetylene gas blew up in the back seat of his car on Super Bowl Sunday.
Second, if you go to his house, you won’t find him, but you will find what appears to be a homemade cannon in his front yard.
These things qualify him for my newly established Brain-dead Bravado Brigade. Unlike the Darwin Awards, the Brain-dead Bravados are reserved for people who miraculously remain alive even after doing stuff that should kill ’em.
A close-up look at the remains of Frey’s 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera rockets the 46-year-old welder to the front of the pack. He told an Arapahoe sheriff’s deputy that he filled a basketball-sized balloon with acetylene. He and his girlfriend were driving it to a Super Bowl party. Frey told the deputy he intended to explode the balloon to celebrate.
“He said he had done it a couple of other times,” said Arapahoe Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
This time, Frey never got the chance. Rolling around on the back seat, the acetylene balloon ignited in a flash explosion.
The resulting science project sits at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, evidence of the crime with which Robinson said Frey will soon be charged – “possession, use or removal of explosives or incendiary devices; a Class 4 felony.”
The Cutlass is not burned. A pristine copy of the Feb. 5 Denver Post sports section lies on the floor of the driver’s side. Most of the car is intact. The frame looks straight. The engine is undisturbed. The front doors appear normal. On the other hand, the back doors now bow out about 6 inches in the middle and the entire roof arches in a cathedral ceiling at least a foot higher than when it left the assembly line. No window glass is left, save a few shards embedded in otherwise undamaged upholstery.
“We found glass from the car blown onto the roofs of nearby buildings,” Robinson said. “In 34 years of law enforcement, this ranks with the most unusual things I’ve seen, first because they survived.”
“I’m guessing some acetylene leaked from the balloon,” said University of Colorado physicist Michael Dubson. Once that gas mixed with oxygen in the car, a spark from static electricity could ignite it into a super-heated “supersonic shock wave.”
“You had a whole lot of heat for a very short time. That won’t set something on fire, but in a millisecond, the outward pressure makes the weakest part of the container give way,” Dubson said.
After surveying the damaged Cutlass, deputies found Frey and his girlfriend at their house with the cannon out front. Bleeding from shrapnel in the chest and face and with their eyebrows singed off, the pair had parked their exploded auto and hailed a ride home with a passing driver, Robinson said.
Deputies had to talk them into going to the hospital, the sheriff added.
As a welder, Frey knows how dangerous acetylene can be, Robinson said.
“He demonstrated some pretty extreme embarrassment. His significant other was not happy,” he said.
I had hoped to ask about all of that and also to ask how and when Frey planned to explode the balloon at the party. But only a dog’s bark answered my knock on Frey’s front door Thursday morning.
Frey and his girlfriend “have had to stay with friends,” Frey’s mother told me when I tracked her down by phone. “The media has been all over the place. There is no comment.”
Hearing my questions might have been a problem anyway. Robinson said his deputies suspected the explosion might have damaged Frey’s eardrums.
With any luck, the concussion also knocked a little sense into him.
A CBI criminal background check reveals that Frey has been charged more than once with drinking and driving. But Robinson said deputies believe Frey pulled the acetylene-balloon stunt stone sober.
Be that as it may, according to the sheriff, at least one burning mystery remains.
“He never has said who he was rooting for.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
