DERBY— A man accused of making several homemade bombs in Pennsylvania has been arrested in Connecticut.
26-year-old Carl Michael Roberts made a court appearance after being arrested in Shelton, Connecticut just before the New Year.
During the arraignment, family of Roberts sat and watched visibly emotional. FOX61 followed up with the family and simply said he (Roberts_ did not do what he was being accused of and had evidence to prove it.
Linda Dixon said this sort of behavior was not something her grandson is capable of, Dixon said, “Bombs, our people don’t even think about making bombs because we are too scared to blow ourselves up!”
Roberts agrees to be taken back to face charges in Franklin, Pennsylvania, which is where he will be facing 2-counts of weapons of mass destruction, and 2-counts of risk of catastrophe after Pennsylvanian investigators say they found two homemade bombs this past December.
Police say they originally reached a home in Sugarcreek Borough, Pennsylvania for a separate warrant suspecting the home to be a drug house containing crystal meth, but instead of just drugs police found two bombs along with a bag containing several pieces of metal, razor blades, nails, and more to be used as shrapnel.
During the deactivation of the bombs police in Pennsylvania, attempted to disarm the larger bomb with a small robot away from the public, but it exploded creating what police are calling a “2-foot crater”.
According to police in Sugarcreek, two weeks prior to the findings of these bombs, another bomb was found in a separate apartment in neighboring Franklin, Pennsylvania.
The homeowner there, Tyler Howard was arrested, but after investigating police say they were able to link all three bombs to Roberts.
FOX61 called down to Sugarcreek Borough and spoke with Chief Robert Wenner of the borough’s police department and he explained how he and his team were able to link Roberts to the bombs.
Wenger explained in part, “They were friends on social media and they have acquaintances that they interact with… and through interviews and other investigative techniques we were able to determine that all three individuals at one time were together at Howard‘s apartment to do illicit drugs trade or trafficking, and even was able to infer that the additional bomb found was Roberts.”
His family however, says not all the facts line up.
His grandmother says Roberts only lived in Pennsylvania for about a year with a female roommate and moved back this past September.
When investigators say they found the three homemade bomb, family members say he was already living back in Connecticut.
According to family members, Roberts attended Derby High school and moved here from Savannah, Georgia with his family at an early age.
Roberts does have a past drunk driving and possession of marijuana charge in Georgia, but the family says none of that matters due to the fact that he was here during the investigation and even provided FOX61 with a time-stamped picture to prove it leaving family members like his father with questions.
Carl Harris said, “How can you charge him for the bombs in someone else’s home... he was gone for over 30 days and she is saying he had stuff there why didn’t she go to jail? Why didn’t the other people get in trouble?”
According to police Howard, one of the suspects, did indeed get arrested, but FOX61 took it a set further and asked about the other claims from the family and the chief-of-police in Sugarcreek says although he may have seemed to be out of the state, that doesn’t mean he is out of the clear.
Chief Wenner said, “The fact that he was in another state when these were found does not preclude that he did not possess, control, or manufacture them at a point prior to that, matter-of-fact we will have eyewitness testimonies that he left those devices at one of those locations.
The family in return said, they will just have to continue to fight, Harris said, “He’s innocent until we can prove that and believe me where they are trying to send him it’s going to be very hard to prove with nobody there.”
Roberts is being held on a $250,000 bond.
Sugarcreek police say that they will be expediting the process to extradite him back to Pennsylvania to face his charge