US police probe links between blown-up robber and dead friend

US DETECTIVES were yesterday probing possible links between a bank robber blown up by a bomb strapped to his chest and the death of his friend who worked for the same pizza delivery company.

Brian Douglas Wells, aged 46, died last Thursday when explosives attached to his body detonated as he was surrounded by police shortly after the bank raid in Erie, North-East Pennsylvania.

TV pictures from shortly before the blast showed him pleading for somebody to remove the bomb and saying he had been forced to commit the robbery. The case took a new twist yesterday when explosives experts visited the home of Wells’ colleague, Robert Pinetti, aged 43, who died yesterday.

A police spokesman said: “There was nothing overtly obvious as to the cause of his death, but because there’s a relationship between the two individuals, we are over there.”

Wells had left to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with the bomb hanging around his neck.

No one else was hurt in the blast, which happened as police at the scene waited for a bomb squad to arrive.