ERIE, Pa. (AP) – A friend and co-worker of a pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank then died when a bomb strapped to his body exploded was found dead at his home Sunday.

Police said there was no obvious connection between the two deaths. Still, authorities sent a bomb squad to search the home in Lawrence Park Township as a precaution, Erie state police Cpl. Mark Zaleski said.

“There was nothing overtly obvious as to the cause of his death,” Zaleski said, “but because there’s a relationship between the two individuals, we are over there.”

Robert Pinetti, 43, worked with Brian Douglas Wells, 46, who died Thursday shortly after robbing a bank in Erie. Minutes before the bomb went off, Wells told officers who stopped him that he had been forced to rob the bank. No one else was injured.

Wells had gone to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with the bomb strapped to his body.

Police received a call early Sunday asking for medical assistance at the home where Pinetti lived with his parents, but the man refused medical assistance, Zaleski said.

A few hours later, authorities were called again after his parents found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the home and an autopsy was scheduled, Zaleski said.

FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge said there was no reason to connect Pinetti’s death to Wells’ case.

There was no answer at the pizza shop where both men worked.

AP-ES-08-31-03 2157EDT



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