Strapped to bomb, Pennsylvania delivery man dies

ERIE, Pa. — A pizza-delivery man told police he had been forced to rob a bank and asked authorities to help him minutes before a bomb strapped to his chest exploded and killed him.

Federal agents and police in northwestern Pennsylvania yesterday were trying to solve the bizarre case of 46-year-old Brian Douglas Wells, who left to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with a bomb strapped to his body.

No one else was hurt in Thursday's blast, which happened in front of law-enforcement officers as they waited for a bomb squad.

An Erie television station captured audio and video from Wells as he sat handcuffed in front of a state police cruiser. "Why is nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he asked.

A state police spokesman confirmed Friday night that Wells had made a number of statements, including that he had been forced to rob the bank.

The tape shows Wells telling authorities someone had started a timer on his bomb under his T-shirt, and that there was little time left.

"It's going to go off," Wells said. "I'm not lying."

Erie Chief Deputy Coroner Korac Timon said yesterday that the bomb appeared to have hung from Wells' neck, and that he had been told it was of a "very sophisticated construction."

While no one has been arrested or identified as a suspect, FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge said the investigation was "going extremely well." Wells' death was being investigated as a homicide, and investigators were looking into his background, Rudge said.

Linda Payne, who owns the property where Wells lived, described him as a private, trustworthy person who liked music and cared for three cats. He was a friend of Payne's husband, who also had been a pizza-delivery man, she said.

"I couldn't believe that he would rob a bank. He doesn't care that much about money," Payne said. "I think somebody lured him into that place delivering a pizza, dropped a bomb on him and sent him into the bank. ... He would not have decided to do that on his own."

Wells' boss and one of the owners of Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria outside Erie, who asked that his name not be published, said yesterday he took a call Thursday for a pizza delivery but didn't recognize the address.

He put Wells on the phone to get directions. Wells left to make the delivery and never returned, the pizzeria owner said.

The address of the delivery was a rural spot along a main drag that runs south of the city, where a gravel road leads to a television transmission tower.

According to police, Wells entered the PNC Bank branch outside Erie on Thursday afternoon and produced an "extensive note" demanding money and saying he had a bomb. Rudge would not provide details about the note.

Wells left with an undisclosed amount of money and got into his car. Police surrounded him a short time later in a nearby parking lot, pulled him out of his car and handcuffed him, authorities said.

The bomb exploded about 40 minutes after he entered the bank.

Authorities obtained a search warrant and took evidence from Wells' home, but a state police spokesman refused to say what was taken. The evidence arrived at FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C., but Rudge could not say how long testing would take.

State police forensics teams also searched near the spot of Wells' last pizza delivery. It was not known what, if anything, they found.