Lawyer: Tech scare was botched experiment, not bomb

<p>A lawyer for a Georgia Tech freshman accused of making bottle bombs says the incident was simply an experiment gone bad.</p><p>Theodore Hollot saw dry ice on sale at the grocery store _ and an opportunity to try an experiment a chemistry professor had demonstrated earlier that day.</p><p>But the results have the 19-year-old nuclear and radiological engineering major from Pennsylvania facing felony charges and accusations that he made a bomb.</p><p>Hollot was working in his dorm room in his pajamas, putting varying combinations of dry ice and water into 12 soft drink and sports drink bottles. He was hoping to create enough carbonation to cause the plastic containers to pop from the pressure.</p><p>Then, he dropped the bottles from his second-floor window onto the lawn outside his dorm. Some bottles popped, but three didn't.</p><p>Later, when janitor Stanley Goss picked up one of them, and it exploded. Goss was taken to a medical clinic for evaluation but suffered no serious injuries.</p><p>About 100 students were evacuated from two residence halls.</p><p>But Hollot's attorney, Sandra Michaels, says he did not mean any harm.</p><p>"It was a thoughtless act, but there was no malicious intent," Michaels, said Saturday, the day after a Fulton County grand jury indicted Hollot in the incident.</p><p>He was charged with three felonies _ possession and manufacture of an explosive device, aggravated assault, and aggravated battery _ and a misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct.</p><p>Hollot is free on a $7,000 bond and has been allowed to return to classes but is prohibited from living on campus.</p><p>"There were no explosives in the bottle," Michaels said, disputing initial reports that Hollot had made a bomb.</p><p>Michaels said Hollot was shopping at a grocery store near campus one day when he saw dry ice for sale, something he had not seen in grocery stores in his native Pennsylvania. That, she said, is when he made the spontaneous decision to try what his professor had shown the chemistry class that morning.</p><p>He mixed the ingredients using different ratios of water to dry ice in bottles. The rest of his experiment involved dropping the bottles and listening for the "pop" when the bottles hit the ground. He retrieved the "duds," except for one that rolled under a bush.</p><p>Michaels said he left that one, thinking the contents were inert. Plus, he did not want to get his pajamas muddy, she said.</p><p>After the commotion that bottle caused on Oct. 10, Hollot told a dorm resident adviser that he thought he was responsible for it. They went to the dean, then campus police and eventually Atlanta Police, who arrested him. He was booked and released after his father and an aunt signed the bond.</p><p>Last Tuesday, the school lifted Hollot's temporary suspension from classes, though officials said he could not live on campus.</p><p>Hollot will probably be arraigned in two or three weeks, said Erik Friedly, spokesman for District Attorney Paul Howard.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cdba58)</p>

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