LOCAL : Police Investigating Possible Bomb Link to Porter Ranch

Los Angeles police are investigating whether two bombs found recently in the North San Fernando Valley are related to the $2-billion Porter Ranch development proposal, detectives said today.

Bomb squad detectives early today took about four hours to disarm the most recent device, which was found late Thursday on a construction site along Sesnon Boulevard in Northridge, Detective Robert Muldrew said.

On Dec. 20, a bomb explosion blew out the windows of a truck parked on Sesnon Boulevard near Louise Avenue in Granada Hills. No one was hurt in either incident.

Neither bomb was on the site of the 1,300-acre residential and commercial Porter Ranch proposal being considered by the Los Angeles City Council. However, the locations of the bombs correspond with each end of a related proposal for a bridge across nearby Aliso Canyon. Porter Ranch developer Nathan Shapell has agreed to help finance the construction of the Sesnon Boulevard bridge, which some residents oppose for the traffic it would bring to their neighborhoods.

The two bombs “could be just merely vandalism-type incidents,” Muldrew said. He added: “It ultimately could be related to the development, but right now we don’t have anything that would indicate that.”