On Aug. 28, Brian Wells began his morning as usual, reading the newspaper in his Erie, Pa. hometown. After waving good morning to his landlady, he jumped into his small car and drove to his job as a pizza deliveryman at Mama Mia’s Pizzeria. No one could have predicted that this seemly normal day would end in one of the most gruesome crimes of the summer.

Tony Ditomo, the pizzeria owner, called to the back of the busy restaurant in the height of lunch hour around 1:30 p.m.

“Brian! We have two sausage pizzas that need to be delivered three miles south of here.” Wells grabbed the piping hot pies, jumped in his delivery van and drove away. That was the last time most of the Pizzeria saw Wells alive.

Wells drove to the delivery site, which had been described as a nearby construction site. The site was down a long rutted dirt road, and the construction site was deserted. What happened then, no one can say. All that is known is that somebody or some people were lying in wait for the deliveryman.

When Wells was next seen at 2:30 pm, he was robbing a bank. He drove his Sedan two miles to the local PNC bank and handed a note to the teller, demanding $250,000. Carried with him was a set of written instructions for the robbery. Around his neck hung a bomb, ticking away the last seconds of his life.

Ten minutes later, Wells was pulled over outside a McDonald’s. Wells quickly warned officers that there was a bomb ticking underneath his shirt. His instruction booklet was seized from the Sedan, but the pizzas were nowhere to be found.

Time was running out for Brian Wells. The instructions told him he had less than 30 minutes to complete a circuit consisting of five local destinations or the bomb would go off. Police had detained him at the second. The bomb squad was nowhere in site. Wells seemed fairly calm about the entire situation, telling police only that “a man had put this bomb” on him. At one point, he looked around desperately and said, “Why is it nobody’s trying to come get this thing off of me.”

Wells did not mention to police anything about the robbery plot or the means by which the bomb was placed around his neck. He seemed in a passive state, arching his back against the tight, heavy bomb before it detonated at 3:18 p.m. He was killed instantly.

The horror and disgust that this case raises within me is unlike any other crime I have encountered. It is not only the fact that a human life was wasted, but the fact that the man was tortured mercilessly until the moment he was executed.

This case raises many baffling questions. Due to the lack of information that was given to police by Wells, it is unclear whether or not Wells was an accomplice in the robbery plan. If he was, what was the point of the bomb? Negative reinforcement? Was the bomb meant to elude the police? If he was not an accomplice, was he a man simply chosen at random to play the losing piece of a horrible game?

If the point of the entire mission was just to murder Brian Wells, this is probably the most convoluted train of thought that any human being could concoct. Why not just shoot Wells when he came to deliver the pizzas? Why take the time and effort to create a “treasure hunt” and watch the man run around in a frantic dance of death?

I’m sure that once the police stopped Wells, he realized that his chances of survival were ticking away; he would never reach his final destination. Even if Wells had found every clue in this sick game, his captors may have refused to take off the bomb.

Described by his family and friends as a quiet and peaceful individual,

Wells most likely was not the type of man to panic, even in a situation that meant life or death. In his last moments of life, he seemed to be fighting a battle not only against the bomb, but also against his natural impulse to panic. It was as if he wanted to leave this world with as much dignity and as little fuss as he had lived.

The overall point is, that whether Brian Wells was an accomplice, an innocent victim, or a target for murder, the ordeal through which he suffered on his last day of life was not only an act of terror and torture; it was an act of evil.

Wells’ guilt or innocence does not make this crime any more of less excusable for whoever is behind it. The terror, anger, and pain was experienced not only by Wells, but by his family, friends, and those who tried to aid him as they watched his body explode with the force of the blast.

Whoever is responsible for this heinous deed, I think capital punishment is too good for you. As unconstitutional as this may be, I firmly believe that you deserve to die the same horrible death as poor Brian Wells. An eye for an eye, a bomb for a bomb.