State Trooper Caused Upper Mount Bethel Explosions

Sunday night, March 18. Ron Angle, Emperor of the Slate Belt, had just retired for the evening. He was drifting off to sleep, counting dollar bills in his head. Suddenly, a loud explosion shook the very ground beneath him and dumped him out of bed. He immediately sprang into DEFCON 1, releasing his hounds and activating his search lights while he descended into his underground lair. As the explosions continued, he began to worry that the "No Sludge" faction of the Township (about 95%) had finally hired a SEAL team to terminate him with extreme prejudice. Explosions continued, rattling his windows and knocking a portrait of him to the ground. But then, as suddenly as they began, they stopped.

It was no attack. It was no earthquake. Nor did I cause this by tripping and falling to the ground. The culprits responsible? Slate Belt residents. The explosions broke some windows and were heard as far away as Hackettstown.

Now if you live in Bethlehem or Allentown, you might occasionally buy sparklers and light them up at night. More adventurous souls will buy firecrackers and set them off on July 4.

But in the Slate Belt, where even the women are men, they would just laugh at you. They like to see things blowed up. Blowed up real good.

There are now about 30 different versions of what happened. First it was a gun range in Portland, then it was a gun range in Upper Mount Bethel, even though the Township has no gun range. Let me give you the skinny.

There's a bunch of guys in the Slate Belt who have a love affair with Tannerite. That's a binary explosive that comes in two packages. One is ammonium nitrate. The other is aluminum powder. By themselves, they are perfectly safe. But if you mix the two and then shoot at the mixture, it blows up.It blows up real good.

While most Slate Belt residents watch NASCAR on Sunday afternoons, these guys blow things up. Usually it's one or two pounds. On March 20, it was 30 pounds that went KABOOM!

The chief suspect, believe it or not, was a blind kid. He may not see what he's shooting, but he can hear it. He's out there all the time, blowing things up. But he was crossed off the list because he had a pretty good alibi. He was at Disney World.

So who was it?

Angry residents poured into Upper Mount Bethel's meeting room on Monday night, looking for answers.  Chair John Bermingham would only say it was under investigation. But Supervisors knew. The bomber admitted what had happened the next day to Rick Fisher, the Township Manager.

"It will never happen again," he promised.

If you were amazed that a blind kid likes to blow things up,you'll be even more amazed to learn the culprit is actually a Pennsylvania State Trooper. He's stationed at Troop M in Belfast, and lives on a 77-acre tract in the township, very close to the Delaware River.

Before naming this Trooper, I have reached out to him, and am waiting for his call.

Township officials are exploring a violation of the Township's noise ordinance. But without a decibel meter, that's impossible to prove.

What we're really talking about here are some possible crimes. It is a felony to risk a catastrophe via exploding devices. It is also a felony to intentionally cause an explosion that damages the property of other people. Shattering windows would qualify. This also resulted in a large volume of 911 calls.

Ironically, Pennsylvania State Police has told a local newspaper that it has "no information" concerning the explosions. Figures. One of their own is the person responsible for them.

This is precisely why DA John Morganelli has previously said that the state police should never investigate themselves.