BOSTON
The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweat shirt claimed it was harmless artwork. But to troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb.
Nineteen-year-old Star Simpson was charged Friday with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney described the charge as offbase and “almost paranoid,” arguing at a court hearing that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was art.
Authorities said they were amazed that someone would wear such a device eight months after a similar scare in Boston, and six years after two of the jets hijacked in the Sept. 11 attacks took off from Logan.
“I’m shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport,” said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the airport’s commanding officer.
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.
Simpson, of Lahaina, Hawaii, was arrested Friday morning outside Terminal C, home to United Airlines, Jet Blue and other carriers.
