By Randy Wyrick, Vail Daily
EAGLE — If you intend to go fishing, do not use anything like Dustin Brown’s bomb.
Or if you and your girlfriend break up and you move out, remember to take your bomb with you.
If you don’t, your girlfriend might land in the Pitkin County jail. While she’s there she might tell the police that your bomb is in their Roaring Fork Valley apartment and where they can find it.
In court this week, Brown referred to his own behavior as “felony stupid.” He blamed alcohol and other drugs.
Instead of recycling it, Brown stuffed a 2-liter soda bottle with gunpowder, .22 caliber bullets, .25 caliber bullets, a .410 shotgun shell and dozens of small pieces of lead shot, then wrapping the whole thing with black plastic electric tape.
He did all that while on probation for his four previous felony convictions in North and South Carolina.
The plan, Brown said, was to put the concoction in the water — presumably Ruedi Reservoir — and blow it up because it would be fun and because it could be construed as some form of fishing, Brown reportedly told police when they picked him up.
“The lead balls were in there to make a splash in the water,” Brown said.
He also reportedly told police he was employed by Blackwater, the paramilitary security firm.
He’s not and won’t be employed by anyone for about the next eight years. Thatap the state prison sentence District Court Judge Russell Granger handed down this week.
“I made some stupid decisions,” Brown told Granger during his sentencing hearing. “My problem has been drugs and alcohol since I’ve been in high school.”
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