Pipe Bomb Explodes in Front of Courthouse

A pipe bomb exploded just after midnight Saturday in front of the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego, causing some minor damage but no injuries and sending investigators in search of four men seen fleeing the area--laughing--in a pickup truck.

The FBI and the San Diego Police Department said there were no known motives, no identified suspects, no advance warning, and that no groups had claimed credit for the explosion.

“Nobody called or claimed responsibility so it’s not as if a terrorist group is bragging,” said FBI spokesman Gene Riehl.

The explosion resonated off downtown skyscrapers, witnesses said. “A few people called who live blocks away to say the blast shook the ground, so it must have been substantial,” said San Diego Police Lt. Randy Nisleit.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said the pipe bomb was placed on, inside or near a 1-foot-diameter decorative railing near the front door of the five-story courthouse, and the greatest damage occurred to the two front doors of the building. A large pane of glass was also shattered, but there was no structural damage to the interior of the building.

Litter from the blast was thrown as far as 300 yards.

The explosion occured at 12:45 a.m. Saturday, when the building was all but empty of workers. Federal security police were inside the structure but saw nothing, and the FBI maintains a 24-hour office in a separate wing of the structure. Agents there heard the explosion, Riehl said.

San Diego Police Sgt. Chuck Peck said the bomb was attached to a can of Freon gas that served as additional fuel and which caught fire after the initial explosion.

Riehl declined to confirm or deny the San Diego Police report, and said no other bombs were found inside the courthouse after it was swept by agents and explosives-sniffing dogs.

Riehl said witnesses reported seeing several people in the area after the explosion--some of them running away--but agents were unsure of the significance because the downtown block is frequented by street people, and some presumably were startled by the blast and ran for safety.

“There were people around, but you’ve got to temper that with the fact that there are a lot of people down there that time of night,” Riehl said.

But one witness told authorities that four men with short hair were heard laughing as they ran to a pickup truck and drove off, moments after the explosion, San Diego police said. Riehl said he could not discuss that report.

At daybreak, 40 agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms stood nearly shoulder to shoulder, sweeping Front Street in front of the building in search of clues. Assisting in the investigation was the Metro Arson Strike Team and the bomb detail of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

The FBI took control of the investigation because the courthouse is a federal facility.

Riehl said material gathered in the search for evidence in front of the building will be shipped to FBI headquarters in Washington for analysis.

“They’ll tell us what it was, what were its components,” Riehl said. “It would be nice if there was a name on it somewhere, and an address.

“This will come down to plain old police work, going out and asking everybody in town until someone says, ‘Yeah, I know who did it.’

“At this point, there are a lot of possibilities for why this was done,” he said. “It’s a very serious case of vandalism at the least. More than likely it’s not that. You could imagine the sorts of people who might want to bomb a courthouse building.”

Riehl said he assumed the federal building, which houses federal courts, bankruptcy court and offices for the Internal Revenue Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, would be open for business as usual on Monday.