By David Futrelle
It was the biggest of oopsies. 23-year-old Cole Carini of Richlands, Virginia evidently planned to set off a bomb at a local mall in an attempt to somehow strike back at the “hot cheerleaders” who had ignored him in school.
But the improvised explosive device he was apparently working on had other ideas; exploding prematurely, it blew off one of his hands and several fingers on his other hand and left shrapnel wounds on his face and neck.
After the unfortunate incident — well, unfortunate for him, fortunate for us — Carini went to a local hospital for treatment, saying he’d lost his hand in a bizarre gardening accident with an upturned lawn mower. Carini — who had been arrested several years back on explosives charges — apparently convinced no one with this explanation, and cops went to his house to investigate.
Let’s just say it’s not looking good for his legal defense. As the Daily Beast notes,
When investigators got to the residence, they found a trail of blood leading from a red minivan parked in the driveway to the front door of the house, and up the stairs to a second-floor bedroom, according to the affidavit. After stepping over a “flesh colored substance that…looked like a piece of human skin,” cops found a plastic bottle filled with triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a “substance used in the creation of improvised explosive devices,” inside a footlocker.
Beside the footlocker was a box filled with rusty nails, and a plastic container, the top of which had been “peeled back in a manner consistent with an explosion,” the affidavit says. The blinds in the room were damaged, and a chunk of flesh was stuck to the ceiling.
I’d say the chunk of flesh stuck to the ceiling is kind of a dead giveaway. In a nearby shed on the property, the Beast reports, cops found considerably more bomb-making materials as well as a note, apparently by Carini, written from the point of view of a mall bomber:
He casually walked through the shopping mall, his jacket concealed deadly objects. … Even if he died this statement was worth it! He [felt] tension that would come and go as he approached the stage of hot cheerleaders… A dead seriousness sank in as he realized he was truly passing the point of no return! He decided I will not back down I will not be afraid of the consequences no matter what I will be heroic I will make a statement like Elliott Rodgers did he thought to himself.
That kind of clinches the whole question of motives, huh?
So far Carini has only been charged with lying to FBI investigators but somehow I expect more charges will be forthcoming.
Over on the Incels.co forums, the regulars weren’t too terribly impressed.
“Welp that didn’t end well,” wrote one, summing up the reaction of many of the commenters.
Would have been interested what could he have done if everthing went to plan.
Another commenter reacted with a pun:
The fact that his bomb didn’t even fully blow himself up tells me he “bombed” at the task of making a bomb, lol.
Still another suggested that his bomb was too weak to be a real terrorist bomb:
A bomb that just blows your hand/some fingers off is not more serious than a DIY heavy (illegal) fireworks bomb – with which ‘tards in Europe occasionally accidentally blow themselves up around the new year. With loss of hands, fingers, severe burns to face and arms and loss of eyesight as a result. Not really terrorist tier bombs that blow up and maim multiple people.
Some commenters suggested that Carini was too good-looking to be a true incel.
“[H]e looks almost like a high tier normie,” wrote one.
“He gigamogs me,” wrote another.
clown world if guys like that have it so bad they’re actually contemplating bombing malls
“Dont look ugly to me imo,” commented still another,
but what with women’s requirements getting higher by the hour it’s no surprise he ended up exploding at society
Pun intended, I assume.
I’m just glad he didn’t take anyone else with him.
H/T — @EmilyGorcenski on Twitter
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I can’t say I feel all that sorry for this would-be terrorist.
This reminds me a bit of the failed underwear bombing on a flight some years ago where the hijacker set himself on fire but failed to blow up the plane. Apparently terrorists don’t often take the time to learn how to not blow themselves up beforehand.
Glad he failed.
Once again I have to resist the urge to indulge in schadenfreuden. I’m glad no one but him was injured by his toxic ideology.
Yeah, our requirements that you behave like a decent person and treat us like the humans we are… that must be so hard, incel. My heart bleeds for you and I’ll never stop crying. Wah….
@gijoel
I’ve given up trying to resist the schadenfreude. When people are shitty and shitty things happen to them, I can’t feel bad.
Hoist by his own petard. For once, I’m not using that in the metaphorical sense.
It’s just so bizarre to me that the manosphere remains stuck in high school well into adulthood. You’re 23. Why are you still bitter about not dating cheerleaders?
23? More like 3 years old. And I don’t mean that as a cheap shot.
Men like these are frozen at the age when their mothers stopped doing everything for them (because they were helpless infants & toddlers) and started teaching them to become self sufficient adults.
These emotionally stunted guys are torn between wanting to stay dependent & becoming independent and many don’t handle this conflict very well.
These guys want every woman they meet to assume the role of their mothers and take care of all their physical and emotional needs; but also to have no control or authority over them because they are “Men” and no “Man” is answerable to a mere “Woman”.
So close, guys. You’re so close. Just take one more step and you’ll be self-aware.
Damn.
Dude really were desperate for a blow job.
@wwth – ugh, I know…
Plus, it’s been discussed before, but they also seem to be stuck in cheesy movie-land. Like why are cheerleaders always considered the most popular/hottest/etc.? In real life, don’t “in-groups” vary school by school??
E.g. in the high school I graduated from, being good at music (+extroversion) would probably get you more Popularity Points than being good at sports. And no, it wasn’t so neat a system as that, because human interaction is complicated.
@PoM : at that point, I think some are aware that they deceive themselves. They perform as caricature to bottle up the fact they know it’s wrong.
And for an european, this pattern is even more confusing, because there is neither cheerleaders nor sport teams in most schools, and the concept of jock don’t exist either.
@ epitome of incomprehensibility
At my high school, the cheerleaders were popular, but a lot of them were also genuinely nice people. Most of the popular kids at my school were, come to think of it. There were a couple of popular assholes, but in general, they were basically decent kids whose interests spanned the spectrum. Mean kids had their own little coteries, but they generally weren’t very popular.
Could it be — is it even possible — that his looks were not the reason the cheerleaders ignored him?
I went to a science-oriented high school, where everyone was some sort of nerd. Those were good times.
One of the girls in my class once mentioned being a cheerleader. I never knew if it was a hobby or a professional sport thing – in any case it had nothing to do with the school community.
I remember this girl was quite “hot” in a metaphorical sense, but she was also a notoriously cool person in literal sense. As in, we were once discussing human body temperature in classroom, and she claimed that her temp was usually about 1 C lower than what is cited as “normal” for humans.
Probably several of us fellow biology nerds found this claim fascinating, but one of the guys actually asked her, clearly impressed: “Does it feel … different?”
The girl was then like, “Whut?”
Teacher (smirking): “The question was, do you feel different than him?”
Everybody: (laughs)
I hope it was his wanking hand.
@Hypatia’s Daughter
Unfortunately, a lot of men are emotionally stunted because society tells them not to seek the help they need and instead to struggle on their own. At this point, I’m not sure how to reach them.
@epitome
It does seem like they took all the high school movies far too seriously. Where I went to school, the most popular groups were generally those who did various other extracurricular clubs, and although we had cheerleaders, they weren’t really seen as the leaders of the flock and were just other students most of the time.
@Moggie
It sounds like both hands were damaged so it’s unlikely he’ll be able to wank easily.
Guaranteed, he’ll still continue to blame his inability to get dates on his wrist circumference.
@Buttercup
Will he measure it based on what’s left of his arm? Or does he have some way of extrapolating?
This popped up on the iTunes while I reading:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpnL-RLJrc
I can just imagine him:
“I was forced to carry out a terrorist attack because cheerleaders wouldn’t have sex with but my bomb went off prematurely blowing my hand off. Now I can’t fap but those same cheerleaders won’t give me hand jobs. this is persecution worst them the holocaust”
@ fabe
“I’m so so sorry about that; it’s just that it’s been so long since I made a bomb…”
@Alan Robertshaw, Fabe
“Because the Chads took all the good bomb making materials…this is the definition of oppression”
1. There are ways to be heroic. Nail-bombing innocent bystanders isn’t one of them.
2. How can you admire Elliot Rodger when you can’t even get his name right?
3. That’s bad fan-fic, not a manifesto!
4. Punctuation, dude. Learn it.
@Moggie
Well, there is precedent for bad fiction becoming a manifesto (see: Goreans, Scientologists, etc).
At least this guy is unlikely to be “sainted” the same as prior incel terrorists due to his ineptitude and that he didn’t kill anyone.