Burbank Man Gets 10-Year Term in Sale of Firearms, Explosives

A Burbank man was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison for conspiring to sell a car trunkload of explosives and firearms to undercover agents outside a Woodland Hills high school.

U. S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima imposed the term on Donald Ewald, 40, who earlier admitted to plotting with three other men to sell 15 pounds of C-4 military explosives, blasting caps and silencer-equipped firearms to federal agents outside Taft High School on Dec. 10, 1986, prosecutor David A. Katz said.

Ewald also pleaded guilty to making false statements to acquire firearms, possessing cocaine and traveling to Phoenix in November, 1986, to sell two kilograms of cocaine for $65,000, Katz said.

Ewald admitted helping two associates, Edward Pajak and John Sargent, negotiate the sale of the explosives and firearms and letting them use his car to take the cargo to the high school, Katz said. But Ewald was not in the parking lot when Sargent and Pajak met with their buyers, Katz said.

The buyers turned out to be two undercover agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. When the agents sighted the explosives heaped together in an ice chest in the trunk of Ewald’s car, they summoned the Police Department bomb squad, Katz said.

The squad evacuated the school and halted traffic on busy Ventura Boulevard. The explosives were taken to a remote location and detonated.

Katz said one errant radio signal could have sparked a powerful explosion in the parking lot in a busy commercial area.

Pajak, Sargent and Danny Roman, another man who admitted to helping arrange the sale, all pleaded guilty to various charges. Sargent, 31, of Reseda was sentenced to eight years in prison. Pajak, 38, of Tujunga got five years. Roman, 41, of Van Nuys was sentenced to probation.

In addition to the explosives and firearms charges, both Pajak and Sargent had admitted to trying to sell 100 grams of the hallucinogenic drug PCP to the undercover agents. Ewald did not admit that allegation.