Man pleads guilty to building homemade pipe bombs

By Medicine Hat News on July 17, 2024.

A man arrested after two homemade pipe bombs were found in the city pleaded guilty to building them, but says they were likely stolen and he doesn’t know how they arrived beneath a mailbox in Crescent Heights and under a vehicle in a mobile home park.

James Jerard McNulty, 41, was arrested in April 2023 after police tracked components of the explosive devices to a local hardware supply store.

A search of the man’s Southwest Hill home found part of a cut shoelace they believe was used to form the fuses.

McNulty entered guilty pleas to three of nine charges against him in Provincial Court of Justice at Medicine Hat on Tuesday morning, and will be sentenced in October following a pre-sentencing report.

Prosecutors read an agreed statement of facts including details of a police interview in which the man told officers that he built three devices for amusement and tested one successfully on a rural road on the outskirts of Medicine Hat in late 2022.

He says the remaining two devices were placed in his kitchen drawer and he believes they were stolen at some point.

Police responded to public reports of suspicious packages on Halloween night 2022 and April 1, 2023 and recovered two similar objects, court heard.

They were made from short lengths of one-inch diameter pipe with end caps, stuffed with black powder and with a partially burned shoelace soaked in paint thinner acting as a fuse.

Defence attorney Marc Crerar said there is a distinction between the explosive that his client admits to have set off and the two that police recovered in the community.

McNulty also plead guilty of breaching court-ordered conditions from a previous matter that he not posses prohibited weapons. Several shot gun shells found in his home form the third charge of possessing weapons.

The most serious charge of “possessing an explosive” carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.