 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
'Dirty bomb' suspect caught
©Los Angeles Times View related 10 news video
He was of Puerto Rican origin, Brooklyn-born, but raised in the dreary Chicago row houses and tenements of the west side neighborhood of Logan Square. The once-Polish enclave is heavily peopled by Latinos and plagued by high crime and high school dropout rates. As a juvenile, he was arrested at least five times. He once was charged as an accessory to murder but it is unclear whether he was convicted. Under Illinois law, court records of underage defendants are sealed. Those facts read like the depressingly typical early trajectory of an inner-city thug, but with an astonishing twist. On Monday, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Padilla, 31, and known as Abdullah al Muhajir, had been arrested for plotting with Osama bin Laden's henchmen to detonate a "dirty bomb" that would spread deadly radioactive material on U.S. soil. "We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb," Ashcroft said. But Nelly Ojeda, 64, who lives in the same Chicago apartment building where the alleged convert to Islamic extremism grew up, said: "I don't think that boy did anything. "He used to always say hi and smiled a lot." The few other neighbors who remembered Padilla -- he went by the street name "Pucho" then -- said he was a quiet child. But police and detention officials in Illinois say he was in custody in that state from late 1985 until he turned 18 on Oct. 18, 1988. By the early 1990s, Padilla had moved to a deteriorating neighborhood in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Lauderhill, east of the Everglades. He found work in 1991 setting up banquet tables at a Holiday Inn. But within two weeks, he was in trouble with the law over a road rage incident. On Oct. 8, police reports show, Padilla was at the wheel of a black Toyota Tercel when he pulled a handgun at a busy intersection. Shortly thereafter, he fired a shot at another car. He was as close as 20 feet, but missed. The two occupants of the other vehicle, driven by Victor Lento, got Padilla's license number. When police showed up at Padilla's residence, they said he attempted to retrieve something from his waistband. Patting him down, officers found a .38-caliber silver revolver hidden under his shirt. He admitted firing a shot during the traffic altercation, but said he had aimed in the air. Padilla pleaded guilty to felony charges of discharging a firearm from a vehicle, carrying a concealed firearm and aggravated assault; he was sentenced to 364 days in the Broward County jail and a year's probation. At his trial, he became so disgruntled he filed a motion to fire his court-appointed counsel, assistant public defender Brian Reidy. While in the Broward County jail, Padilla on Jan. 4, 1992, shoved a corrections officer twice in the chest. The two men wrestled until another officer helped restrain Padilla and the prisoner could be handcuffed. "Well, he was a pretty strong guy," sheriff's Deputy Wilbur Kegler, who came to his colleague's aid, remembered under oath. "He was resisting a little bit, and we had to place him on his bunk so we could apprehend him and handcuff him and everything, because he was pretty violent." Even when cuffed, Kegler said, Padilla kept fighting. The corrections officers summoned all available deputies to assist. "He just wouldn't listen to anybody," Kegler said. "Any time we tried to grab him he just kept shoving us away. He didn't want to be touched or listen to anybody." Another deputy who responded, Thomas Trawinski, recalled that he was afraid Padilla's kicks and struggles might send deputies plunging over the rail outside his jail room. Padilla pleaded guilty on Aug. 5, 1992, to committing battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest. He was sentenced to 195 days in jail, but given credit for 195 days served. Sterling Ivey, a Florida Department of Corrections spokesman, said Padilla was on probation for a year ending in 1993. State records cited by the Associated Press show he completed a substance abuse program during that period.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
