Two men arrested in connection with explosion at Harvard Medical School
Two men were arrested and accused of using a Roman candle-style firework to cause an explosion at Harvard Medical School over the weekend, authorities announced on November 4th. The suspects, 18-year-old Logan David Patterson and 20-year-old Dominick Frank Cardoza, were caught on surveillance cameras wearing face coverings, climbing over a chain-link fence, and entering a construction zone. They then climbed scaffolding to access the building's roof, where they set off the firework early in the morning of November 1st.
The explosion, which occurred at approximately 2:45 a.m., triggered a fire alarm and caused significant concern. Special agents and officers from the FBI Boston field office's Joint Terrorism Task Force and Harvard University Police Department arrested the suspects the morning after the incident. No injuries were reported, and property damage was minimal, attributed to the building's unoccupied state at the time.
The suspects' actions were described as 'selfish,' 'short-sighted,' and a 'federal crime' by authorities. The FBI's Ted Dockssaid it was only by 'luck' that nobody was injured. The suspects were seen on surveillance cameras fleeing the building, with one of them, Cardoza, removing his pants and discarding them in a garbage bin after realizing they had been identified.
The two suspects are not from the Boston-area college students, and the incident has raised anxiety levels in the community. Several parties were held in the area on Halloween night, and 'principled' members of the public came forward to identify the suspects after their photos were released. The U.S. District Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Leah Foley, emphasized the impact of such incidents on public anxiety, particularly in the Boston area, where the memory of the Boston Marathon bombing anniversary is still fresh.
