Elehecer Balaguer showed up to a New York State Supreme Court hearing on Friday visibly distressed. The 54-year-old Bronx man was about to clear his conscience, and he was about to get in a lot of trouble, too.

Four days earlier, the New York Police Department had shown up at his house looking for a laser pointer. A laser beam had blinded four pilots in three planes landing at LaGuardia Airport earlier that night, causing air traffic control for the airport to reroute runway directions for all planes entering and leaving the area. Two NYPD officers were sent up in a helicopter to track the direction of the green laser beam, and they got lucky enough to be able to pinpoint its origin from a second-floor apartment from a building in the Bronx.

More NYPD officers were dispatched to the Bronx apartment, where a woman who looked like she had been sleeping answered the door. Two other men were found in the apartment, but only one of them, a 36-year-old florist named Frank Egan, seemed to have been awake in the recent hours. The officers found a laser pointer on top of the refrigerator, and when the officers questioned Egan, he said that Balaguer, the man who had appeared to be asleep, had purchased the pointer in Florida for $50.

When it was his turn for questioning, Balaguer confirmed that he owned the laser pointer, but he said that he only ever used it indoors and had never pointed it outside. He claimed to have been sleeping, “and did not know who had pointed the laser pointer out of the window of the apartment at passing airplanes,” a federal complaint against Balaguer (PDF) filed on Monday states.

Apparently Balaguer's story was convincing, because Egan was the one the cops arrested that night. Egan was later charged with “multiple counts of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. “He was also charged with four counts of directing a laser at an aircraft, a state statute that went into effect just last November and which hadn’t been used before.”

Four days later, at Egan's first court appearance, Balaguer showed up with a lawyer and told Judge Marc Whiten that he was the one who had shined the light into the aircrafts' cockpits, not Egan. Balaguer is dating Egan's step sister, and the three of them share the second-story Bronx apartment with Egan's mother.

“It was just like a kid thing,” Balaguer told The New York Times, sobbing, on the steps of the courthouse. “It was a stupid thing to do.” Balaguer's attorney says his client is on medication for bipolar disorder and takes methadone regularly.

Francis O'Reilly, Egan's lawyer, said that it was surprising that the NYPD arrested his client. “He’s a florist,” O’Reilly said to the Times. “He’s a gentle florist.” New York authorities have not yet dropped charges against Egan, saying they want to continue to investigate to make sure Egan did not play a part in the laser strikes.

After Balaguer's confession, the Bronx criminal court passed the case on to federal authorities. Balaguer surrendered to federal officials on Monday morning, and he was charged with one count of aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft. The charges against Egan are expected to be dropped in a few weeks, especially considering that the federal complaint filed against Balaguer states that Egan did not play a role in blinding the pilots.

Laser attacks against pilots are becoming increasingly common as laser pointers become cheaper and easier to buy online. And they can pose a real risk, blinding a pilot for a few seconds or creating retinal burning and after-imaging.

In addition, it's notoriously hard for commercial aircraft to tell where a laser strike is coming from, because they're usually moving faster, at a higher altitude, and the pilots are generally either taking off or landing. Helicopters have a higher success rate at pinpointing a laser strike because they fly at a lower altitude.

Because it's difficult to track down the people who point lasers at planes, authorities have responded with incredibly harsh sentences. One 26-year-old man in Fresno was given 14 years behind bars for pointing a laser at aircraft in the area. Others have been indicted for their allegedly reckless acts. In a press release published by the Department of Justice's Southern District of New York, police commissioner William J. Bratton said, “Pointing a laser pointer at the operator of an aircraft is an irresponsible act that poses a real and immediate danger. It is important that the public understands that the intentional misuse of this device has the potential to create a devastating outcome and is against the law.”