1999-2010

Friday, December 26, 2008

Bad Santa's gift-wrapped flaming death present


New York Times: COVINA, Calif. — A man in a Santa Claus outfit opened fire on a Christmas Eve gathering of his in-laws in this Los Angeles suburb and then methodically set their house ablaze, killing at least eight people and injuring several others, the authorities said Thursday.

Los Angeles Times:
Bruce Jeffrey Pardo... approached the front door with a large, wrapped package. An 8-year-old girl ran to answer his knock. When the door swung open, Pardo, 45, shot her in the face with a semiautomatic handgun, stepped into the house and opened fire on the revelers. Amid the chaos, he doused the house with a flammable liquid contained in the package -- a pressurized fuel tank, about 2 1/2 feet tall…



The investigation, which began quickly and continued into Christmas Day, led to two other Southern California homes: Pardo's and his brother's, where Pardo was found dead. It revealed a divorce, the flammable device like the one Pardo took into the Covina home -- police said they'd never seen anything like it…

A label on the red tank read, "WeFuelFun.com," the website of a company that specializes in fueling devices for all-terrain vehicles. Buchanan, a 30-year police veteran, said the tank Pardo used in the attack was "nothing that we or the arson team had ever seen."



WEFUELFUN.COM: BYKAS fueling systems are the newest most efficient fuelers on the market today! No more outdated, inefficient, tiresome handcrank or gravity feed systems and no more messy backbreaking 5 gallon cans. How it works is simple. You just turn the CO2 knob on which pressurizes the tank and forces the fuel up through the hose and out the on/off nozzle. Our 5 lb CO2 bottle will pump up to 200 gallons. The refillable quick release CO2 tank also can be used to pump up tires and all your other inflateable needs. So if you want the best fueling system available, one of our fun fueler units is the ticket for you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The photographs that have been released of Pardo's device, and of his home, indicate that he used the Bykas 16 gallon fuelling system, and a DeWalt D55168 air compressor to make the flame thrower.

He removed the compressor from the 15 gallon tank on the DeWalt D55168, and replaced it with the 5 lb. CO2 cylinder from the Bykas fueller. He used a regulator on the CO2 to bring the pressure down. Don't know what pressure he used, but as the DeWalt tank could hold at least 200 psi, he could really spray a lot of gas at high pressure. Unregulated CO2 might be 1000 psi.

The only parts he used from the Bykas system were the CO2 cylinder, maybe the regulator, and perhaps some hardware.

There are plans around the internet for giant CO2 powered super soaker water guns. He built something similar.

He could have filled the DeWalt tank with 15 gallons of gas instead of water, and sprayed it all out at 150 psi.

Yikes.