brisbane autistic boy's hands blown by sadistic mate

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This case hinges on whether the boys who handed over the golf ball to the victim knew whether or not it was filled with explosives. That is what must be determined before the case can move forward and that it is still unknown is likely why no charges have yet been filed. The assumptiopn of everyone on this thread except Dox47 is that they knew. They claim that they did not. Whether this is true or not must be established.


How to do that? Talking to them and looking for inconsistencies in the story is a time honored way. Using the fact that they lied about it being filled with drugs is not a valid way to tell if they are lying about knowing it was a bomb. It is not valid because it is not an inconsistency in the story. All pranks require a lie of some sort. So knowing that somebody lied as a setup to an intended prank is not evidence that they lied about knowing/creating a bomb. Lies that would be valid as evidence they built the bomb would be insonsistencies in the story of how they acquired the golf ball and what they did with it before handing it to the victim.

Another way and what is probably being done right now is computer forensics: internet search history. Information on how to build this sort of bomb is not common knowledge, not likely to be verbal knowledge in their demographic, and not knowledge found in published books (although it may have been in the past via Anarchist Cookbook). It is internet acquired information and as such should be found through computer forensics on their computers and the computers of the relatives whose home computers they have access to or whose smart phones they have access to. Also their friends whose computers or smart phones they may have used. If I was the investigating detective I would also look at public-use computers such as local internet cafes or libraries. All that would require search warrants (at least it would in the US, Australia might be different) and a fair bit of time. But unless one of them confesses to making the bomb or slips up and accidentally gives up that info, it will be necessary.

This boy has been horribly injured so the anger is justifiable and understandable. But it is crucial to know whether they thought they were giving the boy a bomb or if they were as ignorant of it being a bomb as they claim. This must be sorted out and the police will do so but it will take time.


For the record, running away from an explosion and even not helping injured is a common reaction. As Dox47 said, it takes training to overcome the impulse to run away. Returning after running away to help the injured is a hit or miss proposition. Some people do it and some people don't, having to do with a lot of factors not involved in guilt or innocence. The bombing of the Boston Marathon showed this. When it happened, everybody except first responders instinctively ran (the perps had already left prior to the explosion). After it happened, there are many memorable stories and pictures of some people rushing back to help the injured. Those inspiring stories filled the news for all of April. But now it's May and other stories are coming out. Now the stories of people who didn't rush back to help the injured are coming out. They are stories of shame and regret at running right past bloody victims and never looking back. There are no similar stories of shame and regret from the boys who handed over the bomb but then again 1)those may have just not made it into the linked newspaper account or 2)they are not men in their 30's and 40's (like the ones who ran and didn't look back in Boston) and so may just be too young and immature to feel/say that. In any case, running and not looking back isn't evidence of guilt or innocence one way or the other.

The Tsarnaevs got far away enough from the bombs they planted to not be injured at all in Boston. These boys didn't and were injured (but a lot less, since they weren't holding it). But this observation can't be counted as evidence of either guilt or innocence. They may have not known at all (innocence) or they may have deliberately created a bomb but wildly underestimated its' explosive power (guilt). So their injuries aren't evidence either way. Really, the most damning actual evidence against them would be evidence of internet searches on how to make bombs. I strongly suspect that is what the police are looking for now and whether they find it or not will decide if/which charges are made.

Incorrect, I've never said that they flat out knew, only that they had lied to the victim about the contents (which is rather "coincidental") and that makes their testimony suspect at best.

You just took that quote completely out of it's context and applied your own to it by leaving out the rest of what I was talking about and what I had said. I was stating the most logical and simplest theory based on what we know about the case. Don't sit there and twist the meaning behind my words.
The quote was this:

For those who don't know what Occam's Razor is: Click This

I was stating a logical, simple, and possible reality to the events that had unfolded, I was not overtly expressing the thought of automatic guilt. I advise you to read my posts more carefully before pointing any more fingers, I do not take kindly to people who twist what I say into something else entirely in order to suit their needs, and you'll find that I have no patience for it.

The context is irrelevant, I'm challenging the fact that you are now denying a previous statement.

I understand the concept of Ockham's razor perfectly well, personally I consider what is important before posting.

So you applied the razor and shaved away down to the bare facts to form this:



Seems like it is full of assumptions to me..............

I have seen many more opinions in your posts that I feel should be challenged. I did not want to derail the thread regarding a very serious matter and I tried to get it back on track before.

It seems to me that you want to win this argument at any cost, disregarding the facts and denying what you have previously posted.

Can I suggest that if you are not able to accept criticism then you should not put your opinions in the public arena.

Do not tell me what to do, you do not have any rights or power over and above me, or anyone else on a public forum.

P.S. Can you put your old signature back up, the current one just reeks of a temper tantrum.

This is a horrible tragedy and I hope that they can raise as much money to help the young man as possible.

However, there are inconsistencies in the news story itself that is quoted as there is a statement in the headline and photo captions that there was bullying intent and then a statement that there was an investigation moving to determine if this was an intentional act to hurt the young man.

Fortunately, people are not "hung" based on media hyperbole in selling a headline to the public.

It is good to be in an environment here of reasoned thinking minds, who can set aside the emotion of horror of what happened to the young man and look at the facts reported as they actually exist at this point in time.

The boys have not been charged, so there is no probable cause yet for a crime.

There is another website I was recently a part of that was blaming the "Demonization of Autism people" by society as the reason this boys hands were blown off.

That was unsettling to me as people in that online Autism community were using this horrible tragedy to push a political agenda that society is "demonizing" people on the spectrum as a group by diagnostic label, instead of the real bullying that can happen to anyone who may be perceived as different with autistic traits regardless of diagnostic label alone, if there is proven intent in this case.

In that thread I was part of today, at that site that advertises it supports people on the spectrum, people who made rational attempts to try to offer a fuller potential of what might have happened comments were deleted without warning; even disagreements over whether or not society demonizing Autism as a group was responsible for this tragedy.

A "dictatorship" and the potential deaths of millions of people cannot happen without censorship. Freedom of speech is the price of all of freedom.

I tried to explain that there was no evidence in this case that the "Demonization" of people with autism by Society as a group was responsible for this horrible tragedy. If there was a crime it lay strictly on the those who committed the crime. The moderator deleted my comment and then responded by presenting a falsehood about my character to discredit me.

Thank you Dox, for providing your insight from your knowledge of bomb making. Unless these boys were completely out of touch with reality, it is not likely they could have reasonably believed they were going to get away with intentionally bombing a boys hands.

I don't like tragedy, but I don't like hyperbole either. It is a similar mechanism that starts unwarranted wars in the world, and hundreds of thousands of lives to be lost.

There is always the potential that when these articles are spread that society is out to demonize people on the spectrum as a group by label alone, that someone is going to eventually get upset enough at society where they strike out in defense, if they come to literally believe that type of "hyperbole".

The Op in the article on the other website stated it's time to "stop the demonization of Autism Now". Unfortunately, by making that hyperbolic statement they were demonizing Autism "in effect" by their role in society and media effect in propagating that message.

I am thinking about making a blog post about that on my own; however that too potentially perpetuates a myth that society is having an organized effort to demonize autism as a group of people by label alone.

People on the spectrum are cherished in this country per the label and charitable efforts that continue to support people per the label.

However, as is the case with every human difference there is the potential for discrimination or bullying. It is animal nature, which can be observed through out the animal kingdom. No need to bring evolution in to that equation as one can see it everyday if they look hard enough at the full animal kingdom.

With humans the effect becomes potentially "explosive" when puberty hits, where there is the instinctual drive that is amplified to compete for mates.

Sorry, that was a rant and a vent, but I hate it when my freedom of speech is censored by any "dictator", whether "political" or some "admin" on Facebook empowered by a sense of "dictatorship", over people respectfully and factually responding in disagreement with "hyperbole" (dictatorship as metaphor; not seriously suggesting it was literally behavior by a dictator).

Most Ironically, the "Facebook Page" was centered around a logo of "thinking people" rather than "emotional hyperbole".

I think finally at the end of the discussion, I was able to make the breakthrough in clearly communicating my logical point, that the demonization of autism people as a group by society was not likely linked to this potential crime, if it is determined to be intent instead of accident.

There is no way I could have brought in the point that all the facts are not in yet on that part of the issue, per guilt or innocence, and not had my comments deleted, I think, even though that is the crux of the issue precisely on this topic, beyond empathy and support for the victim.

https://www.facebook.com/thinkingperson ... 4663056532

Last edited by aghogday on 15 May 2013, 10:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How did they not know it contained explosives? Did they just happen to find an explosive filled golf ball somewhere?

They said they found it lying around outside. As implausible as that sounds to somebody who never filled a ball with explosives and then threw it (you and me both), apparently Dox47 and his friends and older kids of his area did just exactly that using tennis balls and strike-anywhere matches. In his post, he also describes the older kids throwing them at each other out of cars, an action that would inevitably lead to some unexploded ones lying around outside.

If I was the investigating detective I would neither believe nor disbelieve their claim. Instead, I would question them separately and repeatedly looking for inconsistencies between their stories of how and where they found the golfball. As I wrote upthread, I would also do internet forensics to see if any of them had done internet searches for homemade explosives. I would also investigate the remains of the golf ball itself to figure out exactly what was done to it to make it explode (this was a key piece of investigation in the Boston Marathon bombing).

I am trying to think like an investigator. Investigators try to keep their assumptions to a minimum and instead try to re-create what happened exactly. The perils of using immediately available but incomplete facts about a situation coupled with assumptions were also illustrated in the Boston Marathon case (which I keep using as an example because it happened so recently and also involved explosives). A Saudi man was tackled at the scene precisely because he was Saudi (visibly so) and also because he ran (the assumption that running=guilt was used there and in this thread too). The same sort of emotional reasoning was used: a man of Saudi decent had masterminded an explosive attack on US soil previously therefore this man seemed inherently more likely to be guilty. And here- teen boys have escalated bullying pranks against autistics into physical injury in prior incidents therefore these boys seemed inherently more likely to be guilty. But an investigator can't think like that. An investigator needs to figure out what exactly happened before any charges are made.


[A shout-out to neilsonwheels for being consistently objective since the start of this thread. I missed him in my shout-out to Dox-47 previously.]

The boys may be guilty of a heinous crime for which they should be charged or they may have accidentally caused this accidentally. Would charges then be filed? I don't know Australian law so can't tell but it will all come out eventually. In any case, the only thing that is known for sure is that a boy was maimed by an exploding golf ball. Whether it was by accident or on purpose is still not truly known.

I agree with this (and the rest of your post, but don't want to create a giant post pyramid). It is natural to boil over with fury and lose all objectivity when something like this happens but it is important to resist that impulse for all but the people directly affected (victim and family). I make that exemption because keeping a lock on emotions and staying objective could prevent healing. But is up to everybody else to stay objective and not give in to vigilante impulses or hyperbole. It is also so difficult to do that a lot of people don't. Law exists (and was created long ago) to reign in that impulse to go all vigilante on presumed perps and let governmental justice do its thing.

There are two reports that suggest that the ball bomb was not found on the street.

The boy's stepfather was told that a similar homemade device had been seen in the area at another point in time.

The ball had been shown around at a number of houses and "boasts" had been made about it earlier that day.

I still find the TV statement of the female witness to be very disturbing:

"He was there with a golf ball in his hands and he's flicking it, 'cause all the boys were there, my brother Aaron told him 'knock it off', no he didn't want to listen (smiles and gestures) so he learned the hard way."

This seems to indicate that there was some common knowledge regarding the potential of the ball.

Last edited by neilson_wheels on 15 May 2013, 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Their lie to him that the golf ball was filled with drugs doesn't actually make the rest of their testimony suspect. On the one hand it seems like a suspicious coincidence that they would claim the golf ball was filled with something (drugs) unless they had filled it themselves (with explosives). On the other hand they claimed that they found the golf ball lying around. It would have necessarily been visibly altered. It would be a rare skill (rarer than making a bomb) to be able to cut open and then reseal a golf ball without leaving a sealant line. So if they told the truth about finding it lying around they would be able to see it had been cut open and then resealed, leading to an obvious joke about why. (I say "obvious" because so many movies show people smuggling drugs in innocent objects, movies these boys could easily have seen).

Or maybe they were lying and they really cut it open themselves and filled it with explosive. Only an investigator can figure that out. Newspaper reporters can't. I come back to the Boston Marathon bombing again. News reporters, including CNN, said all sorts of randomly wrong things that they guessed at, that were hearsay, that were misunderstandings of what cops had said. So I don't trust news reports until a fair bit of time has passed and they have all the facts.

I am not saying I presume these boys innocent. I simply don't also presume them guilty. I am doing my best not to presume anything except that a boy has been badly maimed by an exploding golf ball given to him by other boys. That's about the only thing I can trust confirmed in the news report.

Most golf balls are solid but some do seem to be hollow and have a metal casing.

The hollow version could be drilled, filled and then sealed which would be an easier method, obviously.

Thank you for the update. I have no doubt that as the investigation continues, the actual sequence of events will come out. If one or more of the boys did knowingly put explosives in it, they should be charged accordingly. There are so many possibilities: that none of them knew, that all of them knew, that some of them knew and some didn't, that they put explosives in but cluelessly underestimated the strength of the explosion, probably even more scenarios I haven't thought of.

I have sufficient faith in police detective work to believe that the truth will come out whatever it is and charges will be made as appropriate.

Always a pleasure to put obscure knowledge to actual use.

"Plus one' on that.

Thanks Janissy.