Water Rights Feud May Have Led to Fatal Car Bombing

A legal dispute over water rights on adjacent Oregon ranches may have led an Orange County man to plant a bomb in the car of a rival landowner, only to die when the bomb went off accidentally, friends of one of the men said Saturday.

Ansel Young, 59, of Santa Ana “went berserk” when an Oregon judge recently ruled against him in a water rights conflict with Harold Vincent of El Toro, a business acquaintance of Vincent said. “He was very bitter over the defeat . . . it must have been a tough thing.”

Young, a certified public accountant, died Friday when a bomb he had apparently tried to plant in Vincent’s car near his Laguna Hills office exploded, according to police. Vincent, 59, who was working in the office at the time, was not hurt.

The powerful blast destroyed the car, hurtling metal, glass fragments and body parts for hundreds of yards, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

On Saturday, Young’s shaken family members agreed that the ranching dispute had obsessed both men. But they doubted that Young would have threatened his adversary with a bomb.

“Ansel wasn’t stupid. . . . He wouldn’t have done something like that,” said Donna Rojewski, Ansel’s sister-in-law. “If you want to know the truth, we suspect that he met with foul play.”

Several years ago, Vincent, Young and a third business partner jointly owned 200 acres of rugged ranch property near Medford, Ore. The conflict began after Vincent and Young bought out the third owner, and then could not agree on boundaries for the newly divided property.

Several months later, Vincent, a retired Marine Corps major general, was angered when Young “plowed in” an irrigation ditch that cut off his water supply, a friend of Vincent’s said. The dispute wound up in court, where Vincent won an injunction compelling Young to keep the water ditch open while the issue was decided. Last week, a judge ruled in Vincent’s favor on the matter, effectively restoring his water rights, according to a family friend.

“It’s been a longstanding dispute,” said an acquaintance of Vincent who asked not to be identified. “Up there, your whole life depends on water and you’ve got to have it, specially when the water rights on his (Vincent’s) ranch were deeded as early as 1876.”

The retired military official, who was formerly chief of staff of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing headquartered at El Toro, could not be reached for comment Saturday. A friend said Vincent was spending the weekend at his Oregon ranch, adding, “He’s just trying to get on with his life and put this thing to sleep.”

Rojewski, reached by telephone at Young’s home, angrily denied that Vincent had won the legal battle, saying the court “threw out the whole issue’ and thus prevented either man from claiming victory. She added that Vincent, had tried to bully her brother-in-law during the dispute.

“He thinks he’s a big shot,” she said, adding that Vincent had threatened Young with violence “several times.”

The notion that Young would plant a car bomb was “totally out of character,” she said. “He wasn’t the kind of man who would go and do stupid things. He’d do things more legally. And the proof is, he did go to court in Oregon.”

A colleague who worked with Young in his accounting office recalled Saturday that “he is just about the last person I would have ever suspected” of planting a bomb. “This just doesn’t sound like him at all,” the employee said.

Angered by Dispute

However, an acquaintance of Vincent--who asked not to be identified--said Young was so angered by the dispute that he once physically threatened members of Vincent’s family, causing the El Toro man to alert the Sheriff’s Department. On Saturday, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department said there were no investigators available to confirm or deny the allegation.

Investigators suspect that Young tried to plant a bomb in Vincent’s 1968 two-door Dodge Dart. The bomb went off at about 8 a.m., several minutes after Vincent arrived at his job as a part-time consultant for Double “O” Enterprises in the 23000 block of Peralta Drive, which sells National Football League accessories to the Marine Corps.

Witnesses told county Fire Department officials that a man was seen approaching the parked car with a briefcase, and moments later the explosion ripped through the parking lot. Police have not identified the kind of explosives used to make the bomb.