Man Pleads Not Guilty in Dynamite Possession Case

A man charged with illegally possessing more than 200 sticks of dynamite in the trunk of a car has been released from custody after pleading not guilty to the felony charge in Corona Municipal Court.

Patrick Poulson, 29, was released on his own recognizance and is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 6 for a preliminary hearing.

Police found the explosives on Tuesday in the trunk of Poulson’s disabled 1967 Ford Mustang. The car was parked in a central Corona recreational vehicle sales and storage yard, where Poulson rents garage space for his business.

Poulson could not be reached for comment after his arraignment on Thursday. Telephones listed for his Corona business were disconnected, and relatives refused to disclose his whereabouts.

“Don’t you think he has suffered enough, . . . the family has suffered enough?” said a woman who identified herself as Poulson’s aunt. “. . . He has lost his business over this. The man who rents to him won’t let him stay there.”

A hazardous device team from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department removed the dynamite on Tuesday to a bomb transportation trailer and drove the explosives along cleared freeways to a private shooting range in Lake Elsinore.

There, deputies blew a 4-foot-deep hole in the ground when they detonated the dynamite. The explosives appeared to “be relatively old . . . and very unstable,” said John Bloom, battalion chief for the Corona Fire Department.

Poulson had an explosives permit from Northern California, authorities said, but it had expired in 1984.