Campus bomber gets light sentence

A former Eastern Washington University student who detonated two pipe bombs on campus last fall got a break when he was sentenced Tuesday.

Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins accepted a plea-bargain recommendation to apply a first-offender sentencing option to 20-year-old Brent J. Johnson. That brought his sentencing range – which had been three to four years in prison – down to a maximum of three months in the county jail or the Geiger Corrections Center work-release program.

It was the second break for Johnson. The first was last week when Deputy Prosecutor Rachel Sterett let Johnson plead guilty to two counts of second-degree malicious placement of an explosive device instead of two counts of causing a second-degree malicious explosion, as originally charged.

The original charges, Class A felonies, carried a midrange standard penalty of approximately 15 years in prison.

Co-defendant Elgin M. “Max” Distler, 19, was to have taken advantage of a similar plea bargain Monday, but his plea hearing was postponed so relatives from Florida could attend. Distler was Johnson’s roommate in EWU’s Morrison Hall dormitory, where one of the bombs was detonated.

Sterett said she has agreed to allow Distler, who also was charged with two counts of causing a second-degree malicious explosion, to plead guilty to two counts of rendering criminal assistance. He also will be eligible for a three-month sentence as a first offender.

“But for dumb luck, nobody was hurt during either of these two incidents,” Sterett said, noting the blasts occurred outside dormitories that housed 670 students.

The explosions threw shrapnel over several hundred feet. The bombs consisted of 6-inch sections of 1-inch-diameter metal pipe, filled with black powder.

They were among five Johnson told authorities he made with $30 worth of supplies, including a pound of gunpowder, that he bought at the General Store in Spokane. He said he detonated two bombs, made of plastic pipe, at Spirit Lake, Idaho, on July 4, 2004. Court documents don’t account for the fifth bomb.

The first of the EWU explosions occurred about 12:15 a.m. when Johnson tossed a bomb from a vehicle – Distler’s pickup, according to court documents – toward the basketball court at the Dressler Hall dormitory on Oct. 28. Because a vehicle was used, Johnson had to surrender his driver’s license Tuesday.

The second explosion was shortly before 1 a.m. Nov. 6, just outside Morrison Hall.

Johnson told police he made the Morrison Hall bomb two weeks earlier and stored it in his dorm room, along with his unused gunpowder, until he lit the fuse and slid it through a hole in a window screen. He said he set off the bombs because it was “something fun to do.”

Defense attorney Paul Mack agreed that Johnson’s actions were “stupid” and “criminal.” But Mack said the incidents were “aberrant” in a young man who had received numerous awards for scholarship and who had a solid work record and a history of community service. Among other projects, Mack said, Johnson raised money through First Presbyterian Church to build houses for poor people in Mexico.

“I am sorry for everything that I did and, if I could take it all back, I would certainly do that,” Johnson said as he stood before Tompkins in baggy, worn jeans and a wrinkled, untucked shirt. “This has been a learning experience for me.”