10 Officers Hurt as Fireworks Cache Explodes

Ten Los Angeles police officers were injured Tuesday when two blasts, believed to be related to a “major fireworks cache,” ripped through a Koreatown apartment where the police bomb squad had been dispatched after its tenant had sought medical care for a blown-apart hand.

The tenant, whom neighbors described as an eccentric recluse, was arrested for investigation of possession of an explosive device. He was being held in the jail ward at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

The injured officers, including four from the bomb squad, suffered minor to moderate injuries in the initial blast. It occurred about 6 a.m. in a white, wood-frame Victorian house at 943 Menlo Ave. that had been converted into five apartments.

Second Explosion

A second, much larger explosion occurred 10 minutes later inside the same one-room, first-floor apartment, just after the injured had been hastily evacuated. It sent fireballs spewing skyward and knocked out plate-glass windows in an adjacent apartment building, cutting an occupant’s foot. Fire engulfed the apartment house where the blasts occurred, gutting it.

Most of the occupants of the house and some nearby residents had been evacuated by police before the first blast, and all had been evacuated before the second.

Arrested was Gary Wexler, 39, who boasted of being a “pyrotechnics expert.” Wexler, who lived alone, was described by his landlord and neighbors as a recluse who acted paranoid at times and became most upset when fellow tenants left the front door open. The landlord said he believed that Wexler had once sold imported fireworks from his apartment, but never suspected that any were stored in the one-room unit he rented for $250 a month.

The bizarre episode began to unfold about 3 a.m., when Wexler showed up at Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center with a hand injury.

Hospital personnel became suspicious because his account of what had happened to his hand did not seem to be consistent with his injury. They summoned police, but before an officer could arrive, Wexler left the hospital, police said.

Wexler returned to the hospital a short time later because, police speculated, he realized the extent of the injury to his mangled hand. At that time, he was arrested, his car was impounded and 10 carloads of police, including a bomb squad detail, were dispatched to his apartment.

Bomb specialists Dan Johnson and Bob Gollhofer entered the house first and immediately spotted a large amount of fireworks.

“You can bet it was a lot,” police spokesman William Frio said of the cache.

The bomb experts kept moving through the apartment, Frio said, because “they considered (the fireworks) stable.”

They were searching through the apartment when the first blast occurred at a still-undetermined spot in the room.

Johnson and Gollhofer suffered facial cuts and burns in the initial blast and Johnson later complained of chest pains and symptoms indicative of a concussion. Outside in the yard, three other officers suffered minor injuries related to the blast, including damaged eardrums and smoke inhalation.

After the first blast, the detachment of officers retreated from the house and stepped up evacuations in the neighborhood.

Five more officers suffered smoke inhalation as they removed the injured bomb squad specialists from the apartment. They were treated at the scene.

About six hours after the blasts, as firefighters, federal agents and police officers mopped up the scene, all but one of the five hospitalized officers had been released. Johnson, 34, a six-year police veteran, remained under observation.

Police by late Tuesday had not determined what caused the first blast, but Frio said it was not the pile of fireworks Johnson and Gollhofer had spotted.

That cache, however, is believed to have been ignited by the first explosion and supplied the force behind the second, larger blast.

It took firefighters 30 minutes to extinguish the flames from the explosions. Afterward, the roof was gone and four of the five apartments appeared gutted.

Wexler has had “several contacts” with the police in the past, Frio said, declining to disclose the circumstances.

As Los Angeles police technicians and personnel from the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau collected buckets of evidence from the charred structure, evacuees and other neighbors stood around in knots trying to understand what had happened.

They described Wexler as an eccentric who pretty much stayed to himself, smoked foul-smelling cigars and burned incense incessantly to cover up the odor.

Wexler’s landlord, Dean Lanza, 48, said Wexler had lived in the apartment for about seven years, and except for one incident--which also involved fireworks--had not been a problem.

About six years ago, Lanza said, police arrested Wexler and searched his apartment after he was caught setting off fireworks in a park. Officers, according to Lanza, found a container of gunpowder in the apartment at the time.

Lanza, who suspected that Wexler sold Tijuana-made fireworks, said he tried to evict Wexler, but later gave up.

“He tried to tell me he was a pyrotechnics expert, but I didn’t believe him,” Lanza said. “He promised he wouldn’t have anything else to do with fireworks and as far as I knew, he didn’t.”

He has not been in Wexler’s apartment in two years, Lanza said, adding that when he was there last he saw no fireworks.

The landlord said, however, that officers who questioned him Tuesday about Wexler had showed him a photo album they said was found in the suspect’s apartment.

“They had pictures of him standing holding fireworks,” Lanza said.

Wexler underwent reconstructive surgery Tuesday morning on his hand at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was later transferred to the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center, where he was booked.

Times staff writer Paul Lieberman contributed to this report.