Police Evacuate Station After Delivery of Dynamite

Apparently unaware of the danger she held in her hands, a woman walked into the lobby of a police station Friday afternoon in Pacoima and--as one officer put it--”slammed” down two aging and volatile sticks of dynamite.

The woman, who told police she had been given the sticks by a male friend, “felt it was her duty” to turn in the foot-long, clear plastic package containing the sticks, said Capt. William Pruitt. “She did not act aggressively towards police or anyone else.”

But the manner in which she handled the dynamite was unnerving. As one officer described the scene, the woman walked into the Foothill Division of the Los Angeles Police Department about 3 p.m. and slammed the dynamite onto the desk’s white countertop, not realizing the impact could have set it off.

She told officers she believed the package could be dangerous, Pruitt said. It was.

Pruitt said officers could see crystals on the sticks, a sign that nitroglycerin had oozed out of them and become highly unstable. A blast could have destroyed the lobby, he said.

The desk officer quickly evacuated 50 officers, secretaries and other personnel from the building at 12760 Osborne St. Prisoners in the division’s jail were moved to a fenced-in service yard behind the station, he said.

Officer G. D. Williams said he was preparing to start his shift at 3 p.m. when another officer rushed into a side room off the lobby to announce: “There’s a bomb in the lobby.” The evacuation, Williams said, was quick but orderly.

“Everybody assumed a neutral corner,” he said.

The police bomb squad was called in from downtown Los Angeles, and Osborne Street was blocked off at San Fernando Road and El Dorado Avenue.

A bomb squad officer, dressed in protective armor, carefully carried the package to the team’s dark-blue containment vessel in the bed of a truck parked in front of the station.

As neighbors, division personnel and reporters watched, the package was detonated by remote control, sending puffs of smoke into the air with a loud boom.

“We were glad we were able to save the station,” Pruitt said after the evacuation.

Workers and prisoners were allowed back into the building after 90 minutes outside, Pruitt said.

The evacuation occurred as the station was changing shifts, forcing officers on the day shift to put in extra time on patrol, Pruitt said.

He said nearby divisions dispatched officers to calls in Foothill’s jurisdiction while the emergency was in effect.

No arrests had been made in the incident, Pruitt said. Bomb squad officers questioned the woman, who took them to where she obtained the dynamite, he said.

Neither the location nor her name was released.

Friday evening, after calm had been restored at the station, Mary Cowell of Tujunga sat on a bench in the lobby waiting to report a hit-and-run traffic accident.

In time, the conversation turned to the woman who carried the dynamite.

“If I see anyone come in here with a package,” Cowell said, “I’m leaving.”