Salzmann sentenced to 12 years in pipe bomb case

David Salzmann received a 12-year prison sentence Friday for charges connected with a June 9 explosion outside a house where his estranged wife had been staying.

Cape Girardeau County Circuit Judge Benjamin Lewis accepted assistant prosecutor Jack Koester's recommendation in sentencing Salzmann to seven years each for assault on a law enforcement officer and possession of an unlawful weapon, one year in the county jail for violating an order of protection and five years for violating his probation in an earlier case.

The sentences on the first three charges will run concurrently to each other but consecutive to the sentence on the probation violation, Lewis said.

Salzmann's mother, a friend and Salzmann himself spoke in court Friday, urging Lewis to give him a lesser sentence because he had been severely depressed and wasn't trying to hurt anyone else when he set off a homemade pipe bomb in an apparent suicide attempt.

"What I did last year -- biggest mistake of my life," Salz­mann sobbed, his words barely coherent as he struggled to speak.

"I'll never try to kill myself again. I won't do that to my kids again. Sorry."

Salzmann detonated the bomb as patrolman Ryan Droege of the Cape Girardeau Police Department approached the Cadillac in which Salzmann was sitting.

Droege was uninjured. Salzmann had non-life-threatening injuries.

Salzmann's friend, David Higginbotham, said in court Friday that Salzmann had come to his home the night before the explosion, obviously depressed, and told him about the pipe bomb he had.

Higginbotham said he wouldn't let Salzmann into the house with the bomb and suggested he throw it into an irrigation ditch outside instead, but Salzmann refused.

"I've known him five years, and I've never known him to do anything like this at all," Higginbotham said. "He never mentioned he was going to hurt anybody with the bomb. ... I guess it was my fault. I should have called the authorities, but I didn't believe ... he was really going to do it."

Outside the courtroom, Higginbotham said Salzmann had been deeply depressed over his marital problems and was taking high doses of Xanax in an attempt to cope.

"He was eating them like you and I drink water," he said.

Higginbotham suggested inpatient mental health treatment would have been a more appropriate sentence for his friend, who has been in jail for nearly a year.

"I think they should have put him in a psychiatric ward -- inpatient -- and went from there," he said.

In asking for the 12-year sentence, Koester highlighted the unpredictable nature of homemade explosives and the risk Salzmann created with his actions.

"A crudely made destructive device such as this is dangerous because it's unpredictable," he said.

Had the bomb been more powerful, it could have ignited the gas tank, blown up the car and hurt or even killed Droege, Koester said.

"This defendant has demonstrated that he does pose a serious risk, not only to himself but to the general public," he said.

Salzmann's attorney, Jason Tilley, told Lewis his client was "profoundly depressed" and did not intend to harm anyone else that day.

"He made the comment that if he killed himself, his children would get his Social Security," Tilley said. " ... Very few of us, I think, can understand the level of depression he was under."

In sentencing Salzmann, Lewis reminded him he had been in court before on methamphetamine charges, and at the time, he had turned down treatment opportunities.

While Salzmann may have intended to hurt only himself, his actions endangered others, Lewis said.

"You intended to harm yourself, but you have admitted that you were aware that there was someone else that was in danger by committing that violent act," he said. "...It wasn't like you went off somewhere to do this. You did this in the presence of other people."

Frankie Robertson, who lives in the house on North Spanish Street where Salzmann's wife had been staying, said the explosion -- which prompted authorities to evacuate the area while the FBI, Southeast Missouri Regional Bomb Squad and federal agents helped local police search for other devices -- had a lasting effect on the neighborhood.

"I've lost my neighbors because of it," Robertson said.

She said Salzmann's wife had been staying with her to get away from him and his repeated threats.

"He should have gotten more [time], because he is a danger to society," she said, suggesting 20 years would have been a more appropriate sentence. "...He is a danger to his self and society, and to me, that was just [a] terrorist threat that he pulled at my house. That's how I feel about it."

epriddy@semissourian.com

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