Halloween came early this year for a British man who found himself in serious trouble with the police after a home experiment went disastrously wrong.
According to reports, an amateur scientist named Harry Whittaker was arrested after police discovered a harmful mixture of chemicals in his makeshift laboratory, located in an annex behind his mother’s house.
The hiding place was discovered after Whittaker called an ambulance after having a anaphylactic attackan allergic reaction that he claimed was caused by his mother’s homemade air freshener.
When police authorities arrived at the scene, they discovered a real potion storeincluding black powder, firework pellets, fuses and “lethal poisons”.
Some of the chemicals found included radioactive materialsas well as white phosphorusa compound that can ignite on contact with oxygen.
A copy of the book “Home Workshop Explosives” (something like “Homemade Explosives Manual”), an infamous work by a clandestine chemist who makes himself known under the pseudonym of Uncle Fester.
Its catalog includes other titles such as “Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture” and “Silent Death”, the latter a recipe manual for making nerve gas homemade.
When paramedics arrived at the scene, they found that Whittaker was suffering from signs of hives and wheezing coughbut they didn’t know how to treat the amateur scientist.
According to , the paramedics didn’t believe the story about the homemade air freshener, so Whittaker ended up giving in and leading them to the annex, which he described as “your laboratory”.
Almost immediately, the paramedics called the police, who found, in addition to everything else, heroin at the scene. The home chemist was arrested and accused of manufacture and possession of explosive substances.
During the trial, which began this week, prosecutor Emily Dummett said paramedics noticed that Whittaker’s annex “did not have any ventilation system, although one of the windows was broken”.
“Whittaker explained that the window had broken during a previous experiment, which had caused an explosion”, added the prosecutor.
According to The Telegraph, Whittaker was stunned to be detained for having a mere “educational interest in science”, adding that his goal was to collect all the elements in the periodic table.
“I always took precautions not to harm anyone,” the mad scientist told the police. “I don’t do anything dangerous. Ultimately, it’s all harmless fun. I’m just a young man nerd who likes to do science.”
