GREELEY, Colo.—Everybody in Greeley already thought Louie Abuso, bomb squad expert, was nuts.
When he told his mother he had volunteered to go to Afghanistan to defuse bombs instead of just blowing them up, she kissed him. Then she slapped him and said, “Are you crazy?” the Greeley Tribune reported.
Abuso said he wanted to stop the terrorists before they are setting off bombs here at home.
“This is something the city of Greeley can do to help the soldiers overseas,” said Police Chief Jerry Garner.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is paying for his trip, along with the costs of 11 other bomb experts and ATF agents.
Abuso, a 27-year veteran of the department, said he wants to teach the soldiers how to defuse the bombs so they can collect evidence to identify who is planting them. He previously worked for the National Security Administration.
For five years he has been a visiting teacher at a federal bomb school in Virginia. Part of his job in Afghanistan will be to help soldiers identify bombs.
“We’ll be teaching them to make the bomb safe without blowing it up, to gather evidence, take photographs and fingerprints and DNA, just like a criminal investigation,” Abuso said. Then they can tie bombs to a particular person and track them.
“They’ll be able to find what kind of explosives were used, whether the trigger is radio controlled or they used cell phones or other methods to trigger the bomb.”
He has an answer for those who question why he risk his life more than he already does.
“This is something I can do to help,” Abuso said. If we can eliminate the bombers, we can eliminate the bombs.”
