Radioactive Boy Scout Charged in Smoke Detector Theft
David Hahn
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
The Radioactive Boyscout
DETROIT — A man who became the subject of a book called “The
Radioactive
Boy Scout” after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a
teenager
has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a
possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials.
Arraigned Thursday on felony charges
David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb
County
Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges. Clinton
Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges.
A district court clerk on Friday said Hahn did not have an attorney.
The
Associated Press called the jail in an effort to speak to Hahn, but a
sheriff’s spokesman said the jail does not give messages to inmates.
His
preliminary examination was scheduled for Aug. 13.
Investigators say Hahn was arrested Wednesday after a maintenance
worker saw
him stealing a detector from a ceiling in an apartment complex where he
lived. They later found the other detectors in his apartment in the
Detroit
suburb of Clinton Township.
His face was covered in open sores
Police say that Hahn’s face was covered with open sores, possibly from
constant exposure to radioactive materials. [Or maybe exposure to meth
or
something else –
http://www.foxnews.com/images/303168/0_61_080407_David_Hahn.jpg – JH ]
Smoke detectors have a small amount of radioactive isotope
Hahn learned that a small amount of a radioactive isotope could be
found in
smoke detectors during his experiments in the 1990s, according to a
1998
article in Harper’s Magazine that later expanded into a book by
journalist
Ken Silverstein.
Maierle said his department evacuated the apartment complex and called
the
state police bomb squad, which found no hazardous materials.
He said officials learned in January that Hahn had returned to the area
after serving in the U.S. Navy.
“Because of his past, we were a tad bit concerned,” he said, adding his
department alerted the FBI when they found out he was back in Michigan.
“We
didn’t want any other radioactive sites to pop up.”
Hahn’s first brush with authorities came in August 1994, after police
stopped him during an investigation into neighborhood tire thefts.
Officers
found radioactive materials, chemicals, rocks, plastic and glass
bottles and
two exploded pipes in his car, Maierle said.
Just trying to earn an Eagle Scout Badge
In a subsequent interview with a state health official, Hahn said he
had
been trying to produce energy and hoped it would help him earn his
Eagle
Scout badge, according to the Harper’s article. Hahn also acknowledged
having a backyard laboratory in a potting shed at his mother’s home in
Oakland County’s Commerce Township, the article said.
Authorities declared the structure a hazardous materials site and
sealed it.
Crews from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency led a Superfund
cleanup
in 2005 that included dismantling the shed and shipping its remains to
be
buried at a low-level radioactive waste site in Utah, the article said.
Hahn received a Scouting merit badge for atomic energy in 1991, the
article
said.
Maierle said Hahn’s 1994 arrest was expunged in 1996. His arrest this
week
was reported by The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens.
