A federal judge in Miami jailed a Jamaican man for six months for transporting bullet parts that exploded at Miami International Airport last December.
U.S. District Judge Paul Huck on May 3 imposed the sentence on Orville Braham, 38. He had faced three years in jail.
Huck reduced the sentence because “nobody got hurt.”
Bullet primers had exploded inside a checked bag belonging to Braham on an American Airlines flight. Primers are the part of the bullet that ignites the gunpowder enclosed inside of it.
Braham was making a connecting flight at Miami International Airport from Boston, while on his way to Jamaica, when the bag exploded as baggage handlers moved the bag.
“When he set it down, it ignited,” said investigators. “What happened was small pellets came out of the bag.”
Federal agents found a total of 700 primers inside that one suitcase alone, and several hundred more inside another piece of luggage belonging to Braham, in addition to a press to install the primers with bullets.
Braham had offered conflicting stories as to how the primers wound up inside his bag. He first told the FBI he did not know how they wound up in his bag.
He then changed his story and told the FBI he puts together ammunition as a hobby and kept the parts in his bags for safe keeping, away from his children, and when he packed his bags for the flight, he forgot he had all those ammunition parts inside his bags.
But Judge Huck did not buy his story.
“I just don’t find that credible. Sorry,” he said, insinuating that Braham had planned to sell the primers in Jamaica.
