Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Man Arrested in Pipe Bomb Explosion

A Monrovia man was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of placing a pipe bomb that exploded under his ex-wife’s pickup truck outside a house in Lancaster, sheriff’s deputies said.

No one was injured in the incident, but investigators were trying to determine whether the suspect, Charles Edwin Smith, 70, was also connected to a March 26 explosion that damaged his ex-wife’s motor home.

Smith was taken into custody at his Monrovia residence at 1:30 a.m. and jailed at the sheriff’s Temple City Station on suspicion of exploding a destructive device, Deputy George Ducoulombier said. He was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

The arrest occurred about 90 minutes after an explosion rocked the 1100 block of Herzel Avenue in Lancaster, where Smith’s ex-wife, Rini Duzanne, 51, was staying. The home belonged to Duzanne’s daughter from a previous marriage.

“The house shook so badly that we thought it was a bomb inside the house,” Duzanne, a Lancaster city building inspector, said in an interview.

The blast awoke Marty Bailey, who lives across the street.

“I don’t wake up for earthquakes or anything, but this woke me up,” he said. “I thought it was a plane crash.”

Bailey said he stepped outside and saw the damage to Duzanne’s pickup.

“The hood was blown up, and the fender on the driver’s right side was gone,” he said.

Deputies estimated damage to the vehicle at $4,000.

Duzanne said she left her husband in September, 1988, and became embroiled in a bitter divorce that became final last November.

She said she moved into a motor home after her house in Chatsworth was gutted by an arson fire in December. After the fire, she parked her motor home out of sight behind a Lancaster restaurant because she was concerned about her safety.

Sheriff’s deputies investigated a pipe bomb explosion last month that caused an estimated $5,000 damage to the motor home. No immediate arrests were made.

Ducoulombier said Duzanne and Smith have been engaged in a long-running dispute. He confirmed that investigators are trying to determine whether last month’s motor home bombing was linked to this week’s pickup explosion.