Initially the owner of a “beat up old car” stolen earlier this year in southern California was going to deal with the crime himself, without involving the law. But then matters took an unexpected twist and wisely, as things turned out, he decided to call for help.
The theft occurred in the sparsely populated, unincorporated Llano community northeast of Los Angeles. A neighbor noticed the car was missing and informed the owner who then followed tire tracks into the surrounding desert and quickly located his vehicle. Four male Hispanics with two trucks were cutting it apart with torches.
“When they saw him they threw some stuff in the trucks, left other stuff behind, and took off,” says a report of the incident. “The victim chased one truck for awhile but gave up and came back to where his stolen car was.”
Apparently the second truck had doubled back while the first was being chased. “The remainder of the suspects’ stuff was gone, along with additional parts from the car,” the report says. And sitting right at the bottom of the windshield on a base of metal was a brown A1 Steak Sauce bottle.
The victim camped there overnight, hoping the suspects would return. They didn’t. But by morning the bottle had become worrisome to him because “it didn’t seem right for it to have been left there.” Finally, he called the cops.
Close inspection without touching the dark glass revealed that it contained a liquid “that did not look like A1” and had tinfoil stuck in the neck below the screwed-on cap.
Personnel from the Arson/Explosives Detail of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept. handled disposal of the bottle. Using a manipulation device from a safe distance, they broke the glass. Pieces and contents fell into a bush where an explosion quickly occurred, delivering enough force to shatter a headlight on the car. If the blast had occurred while the bottle was intact, anyone nearby could have been grievously harmed, investigators said.
Det. Tania Owen explains: “The booby trap was a chemical bomb made of muriatic acid and foil paper. The bottle was filled with acid to just below the neck. Foil paper was placed in the neck and then the bottle was sealed with the cap. Less than half an inch of space separated the liquid and the foil.
“If an unsuspecting person lifted the bottle and tilted it, however slightly, allowing the foil and liquid to make contact, a chemical reaction would cause rapid and violent expansion of gases. The bottle would explode within a second or two. The explosion would inflict acid burns and likely cause other great bodily injury and possibly death.”
For your safety, remember:
1.) Improvised explosive devices and other booby traps can turn up in unexpected places, even on run-of-the-mill calls. After all, the success of an IED depends on it being unexpected. Stay vigilant.
2.) As one deputy involved in this case states, “Not all harmful things look like a bunch of dynamite wired to an alarm clock.” In and of itself, a steak sauce bottle looks innocuous, but camouflage can be as deadly as it is clever.
3.) Be alert for things that “don’t belong” in a given environment. An A1 bottle didn’t belong on the hulk of a cannibalized car, and it was the recognition of this by the victim and initial responders that prevented them from being injured.
4.) If you’re suspicious of an item, call in the pros. Bomb disposal personnel have the training and equipment to deal safely with these threats. Better to sound a false alarm in good faith than to make a false assumption in deadly ignorance.
[Our thanks to Richard Crites, a police attorney in Springfield, Mo., and to Dpty. Jennifer Hart of the Stone County (Mo.) SO, for bringing this case to our attention.]
