VENTURA : Bomb Team Finds Old Socks in Package

The Ventura County sheriff’s bomb team gingerly removed a mysterious package from the crawl space above a Thousand Oaks motel room Friday, only to find it was filled with old socks and a pair of pantyhose.

The bomb team was called to the Motel 6 in the 1500 block of Newbury Road about 11:25 a.m. after maintenance worker Isidro Hernandez discovered a two-foot-long package wrapped in newspaper and electrical cord in the space above one of the rooms.

Hernandez, who went to the room to repair air-conditioning equipment, described the package to his manager, who called the Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies evacuated a wing at the rear of the motel. When Sgt. Rod Thompson and Lt. Tom Convery of the bomb team arrived, they removed a grate over the air duct, tied a string around the suspicious package and rigged a rope pulley system across the parking lot.

After retreating to an upstairs balcony facing the room, they manipulated the ropes to pull the package out of the room until it dangled over the parking lot. There, they dropped it into a metal container for explosives.

Thompson and Convery then drove the package to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Range at Camarillo Airport, where they used a remote control device to take it apart.

Investigators said the room had been unoccupied, and the bundle was wrapped in 1992 newspapers, suggesting that it had been in the crawl space for some time.