Ventura Newspaper Gets Latest in Series of Pipe Bomb Threats

A letter purporting to be from the group claiming responsibility for a pipe bomb explosion that injured the stepson of an Oxnard narcotics detective has been received by a Ventura newspaper and suggests that another bomb has been sent to local law officers, it was reported Wednesday.

“We wanted to start the year off with a bang,” said the letter that arrived at the Star Free Press on Tuesday evening, “but we havent (sic) heard it yet. Did it go off and the narcs keep it a secret from you or are you to (sic) busy writing about our brothers in Libya to write about us?”

The letter was signed “PLA,” presumably for People’s Liberation Army, the name attached to a series of threats to Ventura County narcotics officers.

Neither the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department nor police departments of Ventura and Oxnard, however, appeared to know anything about any new bomb.

The two-page letter was written in the same stenciled style as previous letters. It included a threat to present officers with “lots of surprises” and demanded that the newspaper tell police to “sign the surrender letter and give it to you and send the reward money to Col. Quaadafi (Moammar Kadafi) in our name.”

It was not known what the writer meant by “surrender letter.”