Deer Park Man Convicted of Planting Home Depot Bomb

A Deer Park man was convicted Monday of planting a pipe bomb inside a Huntington Home Depot last fall in a failed attempt to extort the national home improvement chain of $2 million, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

According to the federal officials, Daniel Sheehan, 50, sent an anonymous ransom demand letter to the Huntington, warning the store manager that he had hidden a bomb in the store's lighting department as a demonstration of his ability to place a bomb in the store without detection. 

In his letter, Sheehan warned that if Home Depot did not pay a $2 million ransom, he would shut down all of Home Depot’s Long Island stores on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, by detonating three pipe bombs, each armed with a pound of roofing nails, in three separate Home Depot locations. 

On October 15, law enforcement authorities located the operational pipe bomb in the Huntington Home Depot’s lighting department, moved it to a safe area, and rendered it harmless through a controlled detonation. 

Sheehan, who worked at the Deer Park Home Depot, was charged with extortion and using a destructive device in the commission of a felony. 

“Though motivated by greed, not political ideology, this crime was an attempt to commit an act of terrorism, pure and simple. The swift, round the clock efforts of many law enforcement officers and agents put an end to the defendant’s plot to hold the people of our community for ransom,” United States Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a press release following the verdict in U.S. District Court in Central Islip Tuesday. 

Sheehan faces a mandatory 30-year minimum prison sentence when he is sentenced on October 3.