U.S. Officials, LAPD Confiscate 15 Pounds of Explosives; 2 Held

About 15 pounds of powerful military plastic explosives were confiscated by authorities in the parking lot of Taft High School in Woodland Hills on Wednesday night after Los Angeles police and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms undercover investigators arrested two men who allegedly were trying to sell the explosives.

Authorities blocked off about a quarter mile of Ventura Boulevard and two Ventura Freeway ramps for about two hours, while the police bomb squad removed the explosives, known as C-4, from a car used by the suspects, said Charles M. Pratt, group supervisor for the bureau.

Also confiscated were blasting caps, two silencer-equipped pistols and five ounces of the drug PCP.

The suspects, arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to possess and transfer illegal firearms, illegal explosives and narcotics, were identified as Edward Steven Pajak, 37, who lives both in Tujunga and Canoga Park, and John David McCandless, 31, of Simi Valley.

Both men were carrying pistols, but police said they offered no resistance.

Pratt said the investigation began Monday with a tip from an informant. Two bureau agents posing as potential buyers for contraband arranged to meet Pajak and McCandless at a Denny’s restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, across the street from the high school, he said, where they negotiated the purchase shortly after 6 p.m.

They went across the street to the high school parking lot, where the suspects displayed the goods in the trunk of their car, Pratt said. Pajak and McCandless then were arrested by the two agents and a back-up team from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Anti-Terrorist Division.