BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn artist famous for making devices like flamethrowers out of discarded objects was arrested Wednesday after police found a loaded gun and what first appeared to be a bomb inside his apartment, law enforcement sources said.
Christopher Hackett, 44, whose art collective Madagascar Institute was featured in The New York Times in 2012, was arrested after NYPD officers obtained a search warrant for his Butler Street home near Bond Street, and found a loaded .22 caliber weapon, loaded air pistol and a “suspicious” looking device that was examined by their bomb squad, an NYPD source said.
The NYPD could not immediately say what sparked officers to get a warrant, but PIX 11 reported that police had first knocked on Hackett's door Wednesday while investigating a burglary.
Officers returned later that day with a warrant and found the weapons and a suitcase containing wires, pipes and blue chemicals, which were later deemed inert by the bomb squad, according to a police report.
Hackett later told investigators he was “trying to make a bomb to show how easy it is to walk around with one,” PIX 11 reported.
Hackett was previously arrested in 2004 after a confetti gun he was making exploded, prompting the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit to investigate the blast, The Times reported in 2004.
He pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon in exchange for 90 days in prison for that arrest, according to law enforcement sources.
The Gowanus resident was expected to be arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court either Thursday night or Friday morning for his recent arrest.
Former girlfriend Bonnie Downing told The Times Hackett was a “careful explainer of things.”
“By and large he’s a 12-year-old boy,” Downing said, “Living in a zombie movie and playing in the garage all day with leftover chemicals.”
