WESTFIELD – City detectives and state troopers assigned to the state fire marshal’s office are investigating an incident Sunday in which a “bottle bomb” was thrown into the yard of an Allen Avenue resident.
No injuries resulted from the explosion.
A resident, who said that about ten youths were passing near her property on a path in Grandmothers Garden when the device was thrown into her yard, notified city police at 1:39 p.m. Sunday.
The caller said that the youths fled and about 40 seconds later the bottle bomb exploded.
Police and fire personnel responded and Dep. Fire Chief Patrick Kane asked that the State Police bomb squad be notified. The responding troopers took custody of the remains of the bottle bomb.
On Tuesday morning, State Trooper Michael Mazza of the fire marshal’s office said that such homemade bombs can be very dangerous.
He explained that the device was a “chemical reaction bomb” which can be assembled in a plastic soda bottle using household items. Typically, the booby traps are left where somebody will pick them up, thereby disturbing the contents and initiating a chemical reaction that causes the bottle to explode.
Mazza said the bombs “pose a tremendous risk” both to somebody who finds and disturbs one and to the person who assembles one because they are “totally unpredictable” and can explode unexpectedly.
“The potential danger to a person is great”, he said and added that they can be fatal. There is a danger, he said, not only from the explosive force of the reaction but also from the caustic fluids that are expelled by the explosion.
“We don’t mess around with it at all” he said.
State Police explosive ordinance disposal technicians routinely use robotic equipment to dismantle such bombs at a safe distance.
The bombs are insidious because they appear to be innocuous plastic bottles so somebody who picks up what appears to be litter can get a rude surprise.
He said that residents should use caution when picking up a discarded bottle and should be on the lookout for telltale signs of a booby trapped bottle.
Mazza said that a bottle that has a top on it or one that contains a liquid which doesn’t visually match the bottle’s label should be considered suspicious and treated with caution.
He said that there is sometimes a noticeable chemical odor in the area of a bottle bomb and a bottle that appears to be bulging should be given a wide berth.
Mazza urged residents to call police “if they even suspect” that a discarded bottle might be dangerous.
He said that investigators are “following various leads” in the most recent incident and asked that anybody with information about the bomb which exploded Sunday call the Westfield police’s Detective Bureau at 572-6400.
