A 'lonely and bored' man who was 'obsessed' with coronavirus has been jailed for sparking a bomb scare at a vaccine factory in North Wales.
Anthony Collins sent a suspicious package to a factory producing the life-saving Oxford/AstraZeneca jab in January this year, a court heard.
A bomb squad was dispatched to the site in Wrexham, where 120 people were working, and the building had to be evacuated, halting production of the vaccine.
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After the package was detonated, it was found to contain a calculator, a garden glove, four batteries, a “yellow biohazard bar”, a service wipe and a quantity of paper, Maidstone Crown Court heard.
Collins, from Kent, tried to send similar parcels to 10 Downing Street, AstraZeneca, a US Air Force base in Gloucestershire, a laboratory in Wuhan and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un - all of which were intercepted.
The 54-year-old was jailed on Wednesday after being found guilty of dispatching an article by post with the intention of inducing the belief it is likely to explode or ignite.
Passing sentence, Judge David Griffith-Jones QC told Collins: “A compulsion to send bizarre communications to different bodies or authorities is one thing and may be considered a harmless idiosyncrasy.
“It doesn’t explain your behaviour here, which was deliberately to send a bomb hoax knowing perfectly well that it would cause fear and mayhem.”
Collins' trial heard that police were called to the scene at the Wockhardt vaccine plant on January 27.
The package was detonated by the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit behind a 100m cordon and it was discovered that it contained no explosive material.
One of the documents inside contained Collins’ name and address.
When arrested, Collins told police that his intention was to help scientists and the government deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wockhardt, a global pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, was providing fill-and-finish services for the AstraZeneca vaccine – the final stage of putting the vaccine into vials.
The jury was told that Collins had developed an “obsessive interest” in the virus and vaccines.
Defence barrister Janice Brennan said Collins has a diagnosed personality disorder and has had an “obsession” with sending letters and packages for around 30 years.
She added: “He is a lonely and bored individual who does find it very difficult to deal with normal life.”
The judge said Collins’ insistence that the contents of the package were intended to help scientists at the Wockhardt site was “childish and quite perverse”.
Collins was handed a 27-month jail sentence, with the significant time he has already spent on remand to be deducted.
Detective Inspector Adam Marshall, Kent Police’s senior investigating officer for the case, said: “Collins was fully aware of the impact his actions would have and chose to impede the vaccine rollout when the programme was still in its infancy.
“Although the device he sent was not a viable explosive, the people at the site had every reason to believe there was a threat to their safety and they acted in a diligent and thoroughly appropriate way.
‘Thankfully the disruption Collins caused was not substantial, but his actions were an unnecessary distraction.”
