DENVER (AP) — A former hippie who left a homemade bomb outside the police station of a Colorado mountain town has been sentenced to 27 years in prison after a judge found it was an act of terrorism even though it never exploded.
U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello said Friday that the bomb David Ansberry pleaded guilty to leaving in Nederland wasn't a hoax and it was just lucky that it didn't go off despite his attempts to detonate it remotely.
She sided with the government in finding that he was seeking retaliation for the fatal shooting of a friend by the town marshal in 1971. He denied that motivation, the basis of the terrorism finding. He said he was trying to draw attention to police shootings, not terrorize people, and planned only limited property damage.
