Richard Reid

Richard Colvin Reid (born 12 August 1973), also known as the "Shoe Bomber", is the perpetrator of the failed shoe bombing attempt on a transatlantic flight in 2001. Born to a father who was a career criminal, Reid converted to Islam as a young man in prison after years as a petty criminal. Later he became radicalized and went to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he trained and became a member of al-Qaeda. On 22 December 2001, Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 between Paris and Miami, wearing shoes packed with explosives, which he unsuccessfully tried to detonate. Passengers subdued him on the plane, which landed at Logan International Airport in Boston, the closest US airport. He was arrested, charged, and indicted. In 2002, Reid pleaded guilty in US federal court to eight federal criminal counts of terrorism, based on his attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in flight. He was sentenced to three life terms plus 110 years in prison without parole and was transferred to ADX Florence, a super maximum security prison in Colorado. Background Reid was born in Bromley, London, to Lesley Hughes, who was of native English descent, and Colvin Robin Reid, a man of mixed race whose father was a Jamaican immigrant. When Reid was born, his father, a career criminal, was in prison for stealing a car. Reid attended Thomas Tallis School in Kidbrooke, leaving at age 16 and becoming a graffiti writer who was in and out of detention. He began writing graffiti under the name "Enrol" as part of a gang, and ultimately accumulated more than 10 convictions for crimes against persons and property. He served sentences at Feltham Young Offenders Institution and at Maidstone Prison. In 1992, while serving a three-year sentence for various street robberies, he converted to Islam.