SECURITY: A device, said to be art, attached to a woman's clothes lands her in court.
By Rodrique Ngowi
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOSTON - Star Simpson, a 19-year-old with a mane of bleached- blond hair, walked in wearing a black hooded sweat shirt with a white circuit board attached to her chest, wires protruding and LED lights flashing. On the back of the sweat shirt were two phrases that looked hand-drawn - "Socket to me" and "Course VI."
The MIT engineering student may have gotten the response she wanted Thursday at the school's career day, where employers were looking for creative minds and participants knew what "Course VI" meant. Her outfit made an entirely different impression Friday morning at Logan International Airport, where two of the jets hijacked in the Sept. 11 attacks had taken off six years earlier.
"She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue," said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the airport's commanding officer.
Security officials sent in the bomb squad and state troopers to arrest Simpson at gunpoint, not satisfied with her explanation that the device was harmless artwork intended to help the sophomore stand out at the career fair.
Simpson of Lahaina, Hawaii, was charged with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney argued at a court hearing Friday that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was artwork.
She has expertise in electronics and received a Congressional citation for her work in robotics, Ross Schreiber said.
Officials said they were amazed that someone would wear such a device at the airport, given the 2001 attacks and the uproar eight months ago over dozens of harmless but mysterious electronic devices found around Boston.
Simpson showed "a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she is in, which is an airport of post-9-11," prosecutor Wayne Margolis said at a hearing where a not-guilty plea was entered for Simpson and she was released on $750 bail. Margolis had asked for $5,000 bail.
"I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport," Pare told reporters on Friday.
A Massachusetts Port Authority staffer manning an information booth in the terminal became suspicious when Simpson - wearing the device and holding some Play-Doh - approached to ask about an incoming flight, Pare said. Simpson then walked outside, and the staffer notified a nearby trooper. The trooper, joined by others with submachine guns, confronted her at a traffic island in front of the terminal.
"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said. "Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force."
