'Radioactive Boy Scout' at it again, police say

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'Radioactive Boy Scout' at it again, police say

 

 

http://tinyurl.com/29o8wr

 

Feds: Stolen smoke alarms intended for nuclear reactor

 

Friday, August 3, 2007

By Mitch Hotts

Macomb Daily Staff Writer

 

A Clinton Township man who gained notoriety a decade ago as the so-called "Radioactive Boy Scout" was accused Thursday of stealing numerous smoke detectors in an effort to develop a homemade nuclear reactor.

 

David Charles Hahn, 31, was being held on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned in 41B District Court on charges of larceny from a building, a 4-year felony.

 

Investigators said the U.S. Navy veteran was arrested after a maintenance worker at Green Valley Apartments saw him stealing smoke detectors from a common hallway where Hahn was renting an apartment.

 

"Both our department and the FBI have been trying to monitor his movements once we learned he was back in the area," said Clinton Township police Detective Capt. Richard Maierle.

 

Authorities discovered in January that Hahn had returned to Clinton Township after his service in the Navy. He apparently was trying to drum up publicity for a book he has written, according to police.

 

When police arrested Hahn on Wednesday evening, they evacuated the apartment building and called in a Michigan State Police bomb squad to conduct a search of the apartment because of Hahn's background and the chemical items he was known to store in his residence.

 

They found 16 smoke detectors that allegedly had been stolen from buildings in the complex. The suspect apparently was trying to harvest tiny amounts of the radioactive isotope americium-241, a silvery-white metal found in the detectors. The chemical can cause cancerous tumors and damage internal organs.

 

Residents were allowed back into the complex after the police search.

 

Hahn first came to the attention of authorities in 1994 after police stopped him during an investigation into someone stealing tires in a local neighborhood. Inside his car, officers found a sealed toolbox along with 50 foil-wrapped cubes of a gray powder, cylindrical metal objects, a clock face, fireworks and other chemicals and acids.

 

The car was declared a "potential improvised explosive" and police had it towed in for further investigation.

 

It turned out to be a chance encounter as Hahn allegedly had tried to build a reactor and found it was giving off extremely high levels of radiation. When police pulled him over on that night in 1994, he was about to dismantle the device.

 

Police then called in the FBI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies. The federal government declared Hahn's mother's home in Commerce Township a hazardous materials site and had the structure buried in Utah as a low-level radioactive waste.

 

Hahn was nicknamed "Radioactive Boy Scout" because as a Boy Scout he had earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy and was known to tinker with basement chemistry kits that caused small explosions.

 

While a student at Chippewa Valley High School, he reportedly wrote the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claiming to be a physics instructor and sought tips on obtaining radioactive materials, according to an article in Harper's Magazine.

 

Hahn told the magazine that he was interested in the nuclear field after reading "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments." He had learned how to make nitroglycerin at the age of 14.

 

The magazine reported that he caused an explosion in his mother's house in the 1990s that rocked the home and left him semiconscious on the floor.

 

Hahn told the magazine he had been exposed to radioactive chemicals but added: "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."