Naugatuck man sentenced for making bomb

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Michael Dube
Michael Dube

WATERBURY — A 20-year-old Naugatuck man was sentenced to two and half years in prison for creating a homemade bomb that he placed in a backpack that also held bullets.

Michael Dube appeared Thursday in Waterbury Superior Court, where he said making the explosive device, which had to be detonated by a state bomb squad near police headquarters, was a “childish thing to do.”

“My intention was not to make a pipe bomb,” he said. “I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

Dube, a former door-to-door vacuum salesman, was arrested in September after his boss drove to the police department after finding the devices in Dube’s backpack, which had been left in his car.

The discovery of the explosives — pyrotechnic material and cardboard in the same knapsack as bullets — set off evacuations and road closures near the police department on East Main Street. A State Police Bomb Squad detonated the devices on the sidewalk outside the sally port of the police station, using water to neutralize them.

Dube, who has been jailed since his arrest, pleaded guilty to illegal manufacturing of bombs. He apologized for creating the devices, but couldn’t offer an explanation as to why he did it.

Judge Roland Fasano said he understood that Dube didn’t have a criminal record, but he couldn’t fathom what he was going to do with the device. It could have gotten into the wrong hands, or gone off accidentally, he told Dube.

“There’s no explanation that makes sense to me,” Fasano said.

Dube will also serve three years of probation after he’s released.