Damon Smith

"Quite what your motives were and what your true thinking was in acting as you did is difficult to discern with any degree of clarity or certainty."

- Judge Richard Marks QC

Damon Smith is an autistic Englishman who, at the age of 19, planted a bomb on a London Underground train in 2016. He had an interest in weapons including bombs and in Islamic extremism, but was not a terrorist; his motivations are unclear. He claimed the device was meant to be a prank smoke bomb but was convicted of a more serious crime.

Background
Smith was born in Devon and grew very close to his mother after his father became absent from the family. He has Asperger's Syndrome, which is an autism spectrum disorder. This does not effect intelligence but does lead to reduced empathy and can cause intense, narrow interests; this may have influenced his obsessive weaponry interests. It also makes social interaction difficult for him.

He grew interested in weapons and bombs aged 10, and at 12 obtained nunchucks and a baton from the USA. As he grew older he became interested in violent Islamic extremists, particularly Islamic State, and in mass murder. He was raised as a Christian. He used videogames to reenact mass shootings.

Specific villains looked up by Smith include Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bombers) and London nail bomber David Copeland.