(05/23/07) BRIDGEPORT - A Weston man has been sentenced to five years in prison for blowing up a portable toilet.

Bruce Forest was charged last year with a series of toilet explosions in 2005 and 2006. But under a plea agreement, the 50-year-old admitted only to blowing up one toilet in Weston in February 2006. No one was injured in any of the blasts.

His defense attorney and his wife say the incident was completely out of character for Forest.

"It wasn't him that was doing these acts, it was a person that was under the influence of opiates and another drug called Subutex," his wife Mitzi Forest says.

She says her husband had been addicted to the painkillers initially taken for migraine headaches caused by a severe fall about 10 years ago. A prescribed drug intended to wean him off the painkillers caused psychotic episodes, according to his wife.

Most of the explosions occurred at night in isolated areas, but authorities say the last blast in Norwalk occurred during the day in a heavily populated area. The explosives involved a mixture of chemicals detonated by an assault rifle.

"The person that you've been seeing portrayed as this lunatic, this bomber, that is not Bruce Forest," Mitzi Forest said. "He's a very sweet, mild-mannered family man."

Bruce Forest will serve his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York.

Information from AP wire copy contributed to this report.

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