Lincoln Park teen charged in Millennium Park bomb scare

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Citizens walk around the Bean at Millennium Park Saturday evening after a evacuation forced citizens from the area after a suspicious package was found near the sculpture Saturday, July 9, 2011. | Scott Stewart~Sun-Times

Updated: October 27, 2011 12:30AM

A Lincoln Park teen who dressed up as a character from the BBC science-fiction show “Dr. Who” was to blame for a bomb scare that closed a packed Millennium Park Saturday, police say.

Emmett DeFrisco, 18, was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct after police responding to a call about a suspect package near the Cloud Gate sculpture — better known as “the Bean” — evacuated parts of the busy park and the surrounding area for almost four hours.

After 55 firefighters and police rushed to the scene, it was eventually determined that the package was just two bricks taped together with duct tape and wires.

DeFrisco, of the 1600 block of North Vine, told WBBM news radio Sunday that the scare was a big misunderstanding.

The bricks were a prop for his “Dr. Who” outfit, which he was wearing to a convention of costume fans, he said.

“We were looking for a place for a picnic,” DeFrisco said of the moment police stopped him near the Bean for questioning shortly after 5:30 p.m.

Dressed as Japanese comic characters, samurai, “Star Wars” actors and other figures from popular culture, around 250 young people attending the “Soycon” convention met earlier Saturday afternoon at Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park to pose for photos in their costumes. The event finished before the bomb-scare happened, organizers said.

Attendees were warned on the Soycon website that gun props would be checked to make sure that they had orange tips so that they could not be confused with real guns and that “swords must be either fake or sheathed at all times.”

No specific warnings were made about props that could be confused with explosives.

Convention chief Arthur Garcia, a 25-year-old GameStop video game store worker, said the incident had come as “a shock.” He said he doesn’t know DeFrisco but that he doubted there was any intention to cause a scare.

“It was a just a friendly social event for people who like costume play,” he said.

The incident cost the Park Grill restaurant thousands of dollars after police ordered diners to evacuate without paying their bills, restaurant staff said.

DeFrisco’s facebook profile describes him as a former student of Lincoln Park High School whose interests include the book Wizardology.