Spud missile offender found not guilty due to age
A court in western Sweden has cleared a potato-gun-wielding 15-year-old boy of weapons charges due to his young age.
Finding inspiration in instructional videos on YouTube, the young man from Halland constructed an illegal potato gun using his mother's hairspray as a propellant.
He built the weapon using metal parts from a junkyard and used tape to hold the gun together. It was so powerful it could propel a golf ball 50 metres.
After he tested the homemade cannon at a cemetery, the boy was brought to trial on a weapons charge but was not convicted due to the fact that he is a minor.
“Had I known that the potato gun was considered a weapon under the law, I never would have made it or used it,” the boy said during his trial earlier this autumn, according to Hallands Nyheter newspaper.
Varberg district court ruled that he had been careless in his disregard of the laws governing potato guns, but due to his age the crime is not punishable and the court elected to dismiss the charges, the newspaper reports.
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Finding inspiration in instructional videos on YouTube, the young man from Halland constructed an illegal potato gun using his mother's hairspray as a propellant.
He built the weapon using metal parts from a junkyard and used tape to hold the gun together. It was so powerful it could propel a golf ball 50 metres.
After he tested the homemade cannon at a cemetery, the boy was brought to trial on a weapons charge but was not convicted due to the fact that he is a minor.
“Had I known that the potato gun was considered a weapon under the law, I never would have made it or used it,” the boy said during his trial earlier this autumn, according to Hallands Nyheter newspaper.
Varberg district court ruled that he had been careless in his disregard of the laws governing potato guns, but due to his age the crime is not punishable and the court elected to dismiss the charges, the newspaper reports.
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