A local man was sentenced to 32 years in prison last week by a federal judge a year after attempting to blow up his father in a Friendship Heights parking garage-a term that the judge said wasn't nearly long enough.
Prescott Sigmund, the son of a local businessman, admited in court that he had placed a nail-packed pipe bomb in his father's SUV last July. Sigmund said that the combination of an unhappy childhood, confusion, and being in dire financial straits caused him to act as he had.
Sigmund's half-brother Wright, 21 at the time, was severely wounded in the blast. He has undergone 25 operations in the past year aimed at restoring various parts of his body, and the Washington Post reported that he will lose around 14 years of his life because of the attack. His father, Donald, was not near the car at the time it exploded.
Though Sigmund expressed regret in court for his actions, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said that it was only the plea agreement between him and the federal prosecutors that kept him safe from a life sentence.
At the time the blast made national headlines as local media were at first uncertain whether the blast had been an al Qaeda attack.
