APRIL 22, 2015
Former University of California, Davis, chemist David S.
Snyder must pay nearly $100,000 in restitution to the university and a property
management company as a result of a 2013 incident in his campus apartment.
The restitution deal concludes legal proceedings against
Snyder that involved 17 felony charges, including possession of explosives and
firearms and reckless disposal of hazardous waste. He pleaded no contest to the
charges last year and was sentenced to two years and two months in county jail
plus two years and two months out of jail under supervision by the county
probation department.
Snyder received both of his chemistry degrees, a bachelor’s
in 2004 and a Ph.D. in 2011, from UC Davis. He was working on a temporary
research appointment at the time of the incident, UC Davis said in a 2013 press
release. Snyder worked for UC Davis chemistry professor Mark J. Kurth on
medicinal chemistry research.
Snyder injured his left hand in the Jan. 17, 2013, incident.
Details of his injury were not revealed during court proceedings.
The chemist was doing a small-scale experiment in his
apartment to work out a more efficient way to remove nitrate from water, says
his attorney, Linda Parisi.
However, when police and other emergency responders searched
Snyder’s apartment, they found a vial containing the explosive triacetone
triperoxide (TATP), according to testimony at Snyder’s preliminary hearing.
They found a second vial containing TATP in a dumpster.
Authorities also found ingredients for other explosives and
several firearms, which are illegal to possess on university or college grounds
in California. Some of the chemicals appeared to come from the UC Davis
chemistry department, testified UC Davis police detective Joanne Zekany and
sergeant Paul Henoch.
No testimony indicated that Snyder planned to use the
explosives to harm others.
TATP is very unstable. For safety reasons, the county bomb
squad destroyed it shortly after it was discovered by detonating the vials in a
nearby student farm field. The restitution payments will reimburse UC Davis
$18,162 for soil testing to ensure the fields were not contaminated by the
detonation, says Jonathan Raven, chief deputy district attorney for Yolo County.
The remainder, $81,597, will reimburse the apartment manager, Tandem
Properties, for expenses such as housing residents displaced during the
investigation, cleaning up the apartment, and lost rent.
Source: http://cen.acs.org