Apparent Pipe Bomb Found in Anaheim Yard

Three women found what appeared to be a pipe bomb with a partially burned fuse at the front door of an Anaheim home Tuesday and carried it about five blocks to a fire station, where firefighters immediately evacuated the building and surrounding homes, authorities said.

Rebecca Arce, 52, said she did not know what the device was when she found it about 10 feet from her front door in the 300 block of Sabina Street.

“When I went outside to go to the store, I found it over there behind my roses,” she said. “I thought it was only a little bit of pipe. When I took it in my hand . . . I didn’t think it was a bomb. I didn’t think to call the police.”

Taken to Station

Arce showed the pipe to her daughter, Lupe Briseno, 17, and her niece, Rebecca Hernandez, 18, and then all three drove with the device to the fire station a few blocks away at 500 E. Broadway.

Firefighters evacuated the fire station, two nearby apartment complexes and half a dozen surrounding houses and for about 40 minutes diverted traffic from four streets in the neighborhood.

Arce said she knows of no reason someone would leave a bomb in her front yard. But she added that she believes it was deliberately left because the pipe was inside a large fence surrounding her property and too close to her house and too far from the street to have been accidentally dropped.

“Thank God nothing happened,” she said.

The device, an 8- to 10-inch-long piece of galvanized pipe about two inches in diameter, with caps on both ends and a fuse protruding from one, was found about 6 p.m., Police Lt. Jack Parra said.

“She surprised us,” Fire Capt. Jim Cox said of the woman who showed up at the headquarters fire station, pipe in hand, with her two companions.

The women “didn’t really know the dangers of it,” Cox said.

But firefighters returning from a call “recognized it immediately as a pipe bomb and said, ‘Put that thing down,’ ” Cox said. “That’s when they realized they were dealing with something more than they thought they had.”

Anaheim police and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad were summoned, and the device was removed in a special truck used to transport explosives, Parra said. After the device is examined, it will be destroyed or dismantled, he said.

“The real concern we had was (that) the lady, instead of calling us, actually picked it up and took it to the fire station,” Parra said. “It definitely looked like an explosive device.”

Parra said police are investigating the matter “as though it were an intentionally laid bomb.”

“We’re investigating now, (but) there haven’t been any threats or disturbances in the neighborhood,” he said.

Residents were allowed to return to the neighborhood about 7:50 p.m.