Back in 2010 we profiled Bruce Zoldan, C.E.O of the B.J. Alan Company, the second largest importer and wholesaler of consumer fireworks in the United States. Now Zoldan finds himself embroiled in the Boston Marathon investigation because his company sold Tamerlan Tsarnaev fireworks possibly used in the homemade bombs.
Zoldan insists that the powder in the fireworks could not have been enough to create the bombs. Yet, he is uncertain if materials from the fireworks were used at all in the bombs.
“We doubt that the product, itself, was used in the homemade-bomb devices,” Zoldan told Vindy.com. "We’re not 100 percent sure of that. We’re working closely with the FBI, and we’ll get an analysis of what material was used in the bomb-making.”
This isn’t Zoldan’s first brush with the FBI in this regard. We reported in our 2010 profile that Zoldan previously found himself defending the sale of his fireworks when Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to explode a parked SUV on May 1, 2010 in New York’s Times Square, bought some Phantom firecrackers for inclusion in the device, which did not explode.
“We obviously need to band together to do everything we can to stop this," Zoldan said in the recent interview. “The fireworks industry," he added, "will do what it can to minimize this” in the future.
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