A United States District Court in Massachusetts has sentenced a 52-year-old resident of the Boston area to three years imprisonment for pointing a laser at a police helicopter. He was found guilty of one count of "willfully interfering with an aircraft operator with reckless disregard for human life" and another of making false statements.

That brief description doesn't do justice to the incident in question, so we obtained a copy of the court investigator's affidavit to get more details on the case.

Unlike anything before

On the night of December 8, 2007, Massachusetts State Police Sergeant Timothy Riley and State Trooper Michael Basteri were flying a helicopter over Boston Harbor. It was about 9:30pm and they were escorting a tanker carrying liquid natural gas. The chopper hovered over the Mystic River somewhere between the Distrigas facility in Everett and the Tobin Bridge.

Suddenly Trooper Basteri saw the laser—a powerful green beam coming from the shore. It snaked across the water and up towards the helicopter's cockpit. Basteri warned Riley that the blast of light was imminent, and warned him not to look at it.

Riley in turn quickly struggled to bank the copter to the right so the beam wouldn't penetrate the vehicle. But the concentrated stream moved too fast. "When the laser beam reached the helicopter it immediately filled the cockpit with an intense bright green light unlike anything either man had experienced before," the affidavit said.

After the beam left their vehicle, Riley and Basteri began trying to track it down. To their alarm, it started shining on landing paths at Logan Airport. They called Logan Airport Tower to alert air traffic control, then received permission from their command to leave the tanker and locate the origin of the threat.

Over the next half an hour or so, the laser lit up the helicopter's cockpit about six more times for three to five seconds while the two officers tried to determine its whereabouts. They flew in "S-shape" formation to try to avoid the light.

Finally, they identified the source: "an open window on the third floor of a triple-decker on the Somerville/Medford line." (Translation: a three-story house located close to the border between Somerville and Medford).

He was the one

Medford police rushed to the neighborhood, where witnesses told them that they'd seen a green laser emanating from the third floor of the building in question the night before. Two officers went up to the apartment and spoke with one Gerard Sasso, who answered the door and let them in.

The police looked around the flat, which was filled with "memorabilia-type items related to the President of the United States, the FBI, CIA and military." A kitchen window was wide open despite the December weather. It faced the Distrigas terminal.

Upon questioning, Sasso at first denied having anything to do with the laser. He claimed he had a small key-chain version, but no other. The police, however, noticed another, larger laser nearby.

"Sasso then broke down," the transcript notes, "admitted that he was the one who had lased the helicopter, and apologized for lying." He took the officers to his baseboard heating system, where he had hidden the laser he used earlier. One pointed the device out the kitchen window. It easily illuminated buildings several miles away.

The suspect then mentioned that he had even more lasers. Police searched the house at his invitation and found nine. "They also observed folders marked 'President of the United States' containing disks hand-labeled 'NSA information' and 'CIA information'." (Why the affidavit found relevance in these objects is unclear).

Second conviction

Authorities identified the laser as a Class IIIB device with a power output of 240 mw. They're used in entertainment light shows and are classified as dangerous to directly observe.

Sasso could have gotten a harsher sentence. Federal law offers miscreants convicted of interfering with a flying craft up to 20 years imprisonment plus a $250,000 fine. False statement makers can receive up to five years in prison and another $250,000.

He is the second person convicted of doing something like this. In 2008 Dana Christian Welch of Orange County, California was found guilty of flight interference by directing a laser at two commercial planes about to land at John Wayne Airport. One shot blinded a pilot and prompted another to duck to avoid the stream.