Sacked air traffic controller 'planted house bombs'
A former air traffic controller with a British firm will face possible charges in Colorado after being suspected of planting homemade bombs outside five homes.
Robert Burke, 54, waived extradition in federal court in Salt Lake City, Utah, and will be sent to Denver, where a warrant accuses him of possessing an unregistered firearm.
Burke worked for Serco Group, a British company that provides air traffic controllers to America’s Federal Aviation Administration at 56 airports, including Colorado’s Grand Junction, for four years before he was sacked in 2004.
Burke had not yet been charged with a crime, said prosecutor David Gaouette. Government prosecutors have 30 days after an arrest to present information to a grand jury for possible charges.
Burke was arrested on Wednesday behind a Wal-Mart discount store in Orem, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake, after police in Grand Junction received a tip-off from a newspaper reporter.
Authorities had been looking for Burke since March 24, when bombs were found outside the homes of four of his former co-workers at Serco and the home of a FAA employee.
Three of the devices exploded, but caused no damage or injury. Two others were defused.
The bombs resembled one that detonated on February 1 on the roof of a Murfreesboro, Tennessee, building that housed Serco offices, authorities said.
Serco did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction passed along information to authorities after receiving a call from a man who identified himself as “a friend of Robert Burke”.
A reporter at the newspaper suspected the caller actually was Burke, said Dennis Herzog, the newspaper’s managing editor.
The caller said he had information about Serco that Burke wanted published and initially said he would mail the information. But then he asked to meet the reporter in a motel car park in Provo yesterday.
Herzog said the paper felt it had a duty as “a good corporate citizen” to contact police.
