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Illegal Fireworks Causing Harm

SCRANTON — Scranton police expect to charge a man with risking a catastrophe after he injured himself with a homemade firework. Tuesday afternoon, Scranto...

SCRANTON -- Scranton police expect to charge a man with risking a catastrophe after he injured himself with a homemade firework.

Tuesday afternoon, Scranton city officials condemned a home on Jefferson Avenue. Scranton police and the FBI searched the place Monday, finding dozens of materials used to make explosives.

Last week, friends found Ronney Rutkosky, 32, dead in a field off Davis Street in Moosic. The coroner would later determine Rutkosky was killed after setting off an explosive device.

Friends say Rutkosky loved explosives and often made his own.

The same hobby severely injured another man from Scranton. The FBI, a bomb squad, and Scranton police searched Raymond Jones' home on Jefferson Avenue in Scranton Monday after Jones showed up at the hospital with a severe injury to his hand.

Jones said he was hurt after igniting a homemade firework.

Police wanted to look for any potentially dangerous explosive material. What police found inside filled three pages of a search warrant -- about 75 separate items that could be used to make explosives.

We showed the list to fireworks seller Chuck Karam. He says the explosives used in both of those cases are far more dangerous than anything found is his store in Moosic.

"Those devices that those individuals were handling, in my opinion, had to be illegal explosives and not a consumer-grade firework,"  Karam said.

Karam says both men likely made M-80s or quarter sticks and that the materials used to make them could be very dangerous.

"When you have a person from down the street trying to build a firework, or build an illegal explosive, only bad things can happen," Karam added.

Ronney Rutkosky is set to be laid to rest this week.

Raymond Jones is still recovering from his injury and Scranton police say he will be charged with two felonies as soon as he's released from the hospital.

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