This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Yesterday, 19-year-old MIT studentStar Simpson walked into Terminal C at Logan Airport to meet her boyfriend. Everything was normal, except for the fact that she was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with a computer circuit board and wiring sewed or otherwise attached to the chest area. She also held play-doh in her hands. To her, it was art or just the dorky shirt she wore to bed and didn't change the next morning. To others, it was only a matter of time before police with automatic weapons appeared to take her down.
Here's a take on some statements said over the internetz and in the media:
She had a bomb looking device strapped to her body. ~ Prosecutor
As a lawyer in court, that is a bit misleading, but then again, this is what lawyers do best. To say strapped stretches the truth adding false imagery of terrorists in Israel. A person walked onto the bus with a bomb strapped to their chest. Let's be honest here, the circuit board was sewed or attached, not strapped. Stop the mind games please.
Fuck the police! ~ lots of people
The police were only acting on intel given to them by the civilian reporting a girl with a suspicious device on her. Even if the civilian downplayed the description over the phone as "it's probably nothing, but you may want to check it out," the police are going to take it seriously just in case. And so they did, with Uzi's.
If you report to the LAPD that there are some kids playing with toy bebe guns and are having fun shooting each other, they are going to respond to a "shots fired" call just in case you, as the caller, are wrong about the guns being a bebe guns -- it could be something worse. The police don't know what you're seeing and people calling the police don't always get it right. So better safer than sorry.
Authorities call it a fake bomb; she called it art. ~ WBZTV
Can it be two things at once? Yes. When hasn't art been a masterpiece and a subject of public and government scrutiny at the same time? Same shit, different era.
Photo from WBZTV
