Emmett DeFrisco became Chicago's most famous cosplay kid yesterday after someone found his homemade, duct-taped, bricks-and-wires contraption in a public park, determined that the unusual object was a Suspicious Package, and called law enforcement. The whole park got shut down because of this thing!

DeFrisco, 18, says his bricks-and-wires-and-tape "package" was just part of the costume he was wearing while participating in Soycon—known as "the largest cosplay gathering in the Midwest" among select role-playing game types (or maybe just the Soycon promoters ... whichever seems more likely):

"Me and my friends were coming back from an activity where we dress up and act as our favorite characters, and I was dressed up as a Dr. Who character. It's a BBC show," [DeFrisco] said.

DeFrisco said that, on Friday, he had made what he calls "this little doohickey" for part of his costume that he says "had a lot of wires and stuff."

While he and his friends were playing in downtown Chitown's Millennium Park yesterday evening, DeFrisco apparently left behind his little doohickey near "the Bean"—the park's shiny, bean-shaped sculpture/attraction created by Anish Kapoor (it's actually titled "Cloud Gate" but whatever, it's Sunday, let's not be snobby). The cops were called, and soon thereafter emergency response and Level 1 Hazardous Materials Response teams arrived, police "cordoned off the area" around the Bean, a nearby restaurant was shut down, everybody had to leave the park STAT, and traffic was diverted. This went on for a few hours.

DeFrisco has now been charged with one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct for failing to predict that his bricks would lead to the evacuation of the downtown area of America's third-largest city. Like come on, he's a role-playing type—don't they play with crystal balls and shit? He should have known this was going to happen, or stuck to something simpler to explain like chess.

At least he didn't leave any "suspicious" sex dolls behind, because then he might be facing some felony charges.

[Chicago Tribune, CBS. Image via AP]