Couple Jolted From Bed as Powerful Pipe Bomb Damages Home

A powerful pipe bomb tore through the front door of a couple’s home in La Verne before dawn on Wednesday, shattering windows, scattering furniture and perforating the walls with dozens of metal shards from the bomb.

Tim Clark, 32, and his wife, Kathleen Fraser, 42, both of whom are educators in the La Verne area, were jolted from their bed by the blast. But despite extensive damage to their bedroom, neither sustained serious injury.

“Honest to God, I thought it was World War III,” Fraser told a reporter a few hours later. “The whole house just imploded. . . .

“There were little embers glowing all over the living room,” she said. “There was a taste of sulfur in the air. It looked--and it smelled--like the Fourth of July in there.”

Neither the couple nor police, or any neighbors interviewed, could offer any explanation for the blast.

“The police said the bomb was placed, not thrown, right on the doorstep,” Clark said. “They said it seemed to be placed so it wouldn’t kill us, more of a scare tactic.”

“Well, if they wanted to scare us, they did a real good job,” Fraser said. “Now the people who did it have got to tell us why. We’re not into drugs. We’re not into gangs. We don’t owe anyone money. . . . No enemies. No threats. We’re teachers--real normal people.”

Fraser, who is an instructor at a local institution for mentally retarded adults, said she and Clark, a teacher at a local elementary school, had been asleep in their bedroom at the front of the small home they rent in the 2300 block of East 2nd Street when Clark got up at about 3 a.m. to visit the bathroom.

“While he was gone, I heard something--I guess it was outside--but at the time I thought it was Tim,” she said. “Then he got back in bed. We were both just dozing off when it hit. The noise was phenomenal.”

La Verne police said their preliminary investigation indicated that the bomb consisted of a metal pipe filled with gunpowder. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad experts, called in to assist in the investigation, declined comment on their initial findings.

Dave Stewart, 32, who lives across the street from the Clark-Fraser home, said the blast tossed him “right out of bed”. Shawn Scriven, 21, who lives next door to Stewart, said the explosion awakened him but he couldn’t figure out right away what had happened.

“At first, I thought it was a dream,” Scriven said. “Then I realized it was too realistic to be a dream.”

Stewart said neighbors gathered across the street from where the explosion occurred as the patrol cars they had summoned by phone began to arrive.

La Verne Police Lt. Larry Smith said the officers ordered Clark, Fraser and about half a dozen of their neighbors out of their homes while a search was made for other explosives.

“I was sitting out there in my nightgown,” Fraser said. “I noticed that there was a fragment of glass embedded in my hand, but it wasn’t too bad.

“It must have been two hours later before I came out of it,” she added. “I suddenly realized, ‘I don’t have any clothes on!”

She said she and Clark, who have known each other for years, huddled together as the sun began to rise, wondering aloud why someone had bombed their home.

“I asked him, ‘What’s in your past?’ “she recalled with a wry chuckle. “He asked me the same thing. . . . Nothing.”

Lt. Smith said that as of Wednesday afternoon, no communications had been received from anyone claiming responsibility for the blast. While one police officer suggested that the attackers had simply bombed the wrong home, Smith said there was no evidence that anyone else in the neighborhood might have been targeted.

“This is a nice, quiet town,” Smith said. “It’s the first incident of that type here. This is the kind of town where you can still walk down the street (safely) at night.”

But while Smith tended to discount the “wrong house” theory, Clark said he was inclined to believe it.

“I’m sure the bomb was meant for some other house,” he said. “I just hope that the people who did this realize that they goofed.”