Former West Paramedic Bryce Reed Faces Sentencing

DALLAS (AP) — A former Texas paramedic faces sentencing on charges that he tried to assemble a pipe bomb, in a case unrelated to the fertilizer plant blast that devastated his town.

Bryce Reed will be sentenced Wednesday in Waco.

Federal authorities arrested Reed a few weeks after the April 17 blast killed 15 people in the town of West, about 80 miles south of Dallas. They accused him of trying to hide components of a pipe bomb.

Authorities never linked Reed to the blast, but say he did Internet searches on explosives and ordered ingredients to make an explosive.

Reed pleaded guilty in October to conspiring to make an unregistered firearm and attempting to obstruct justice.

His attorney, Jonathan Sibley, has said Reed had no intentions of harming anyone with the materials.

NOMAAN MERCHANT, Associated Press