Man Arrested in N. California Bomb Blasts

Authorities on Sunday arrested a man suspected of plotting a series of dynamite bomb blasts intended to destroy evidence in a pending court case.

No one was hurt in the pair of bombings, which rocked the Solano County courthouse and damaged three automated tellers outside a Wells Fargo bank last week.

The name of the suspect was being withheld while the investigation continues, and at least two other suspects were being sought, Vallejo police spokesman Lt. Ron Jackson said.

“The motive, we believe, was an attempt to stop the county criminal justice system,” Jackson said. “It’s not gang-related or militia-related or anything like that, but as simple as they wanted to stop a relatively serious court case and they thought if they could destroy the evidence they could stop the trial.”

After the arrest early Sunday in a Vallejo apartment complex, a team of federal and local authorities recovered a brown Pontiac Grand Le Mans wired as a car-bomb with 61 sticks of dynamite, which police believe the suspects intended to use to target Vallejo’s police evidence facility, Jackson said. The apartment complex was evacuated for about three hours as a precaution.

“We think it was going to happen relatively soon and you can imagine what 60 sticks of dynamite would have done,” he said.

Jackson would not detail who among the suspects, if any, was connected with the court case, nor the nature of the court proceeding.

The incidents began Jan. 25, when a knapsack containing 30 sticks of dynamite was found leaning against the outside wall of the John F. Kennedy library, in whose basement the police evidence unit is housed. There was no explosion and no injuries.

Jackson said the bombs may have been planned for the library and the bank at the same time, with the bank blast intended to serve as a diversion, he said.

Authorities said the suspect in custody, whom he would describe only as male, was arrested at about 2:30 a.m. in a residential Vallejo neighborhood. The suspect, authorities say, had lived on and off for a number of years in the city about 37 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Authorities said they have found no evidence that the suspects had connections to any other groups or cities.

Paul Snabel, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said evidence recovered so far does not indicate the group was sophisticated in its efforts, “but they had enough knowledge to make [a bomb] go off. They had a basic understanding of what they needed.”

“It could be a very devastating device in a city,” he added.

The mysterious bombings began unfolding when two children found the backpack with dynamite rigged to three separate detonators left in the ivy outside the library. After fiddling with wires coming out of the pack, the children--ages 10 and 14--alerted a security guard, who called police.

Before a technician dismantled the device, a nearby restaurant, a post office and City Hall were evacuated. Ferry service to the bayside town was delayed.

Hours later, a separate bomb exploded beside a row of automated teller machines at a Wells Fargo Bank. The blast--which also involved dynamite--shattered windows, punched a hole in the bank’s exterior wall and damaged the cash machines.

Last Monday, a bomb threat against the county courthouse was delivered by telephone. The building was evacuated and searched, but no device was found.

Then, on Thursday, at about 3:30 a.m., the most powerful blast occurred, an explosion that tore through the night, gouging a 3-foot-wide chunk in the courthouse wall. It shattered 22 of the building’s windows and was felt blocks away, even damaging four businesses on nearby streets. The courthouse, which has about 100 employees, was closed for the day.

Investigators said the bomb was hidden in the bushes in front of the two-story building.

Jackson said major breaks in the case came when authorities were able to track the explosives used for the bombings, and were contacted by a number of people who apparently knew the suspects and had valuable information about the bombings.

As police made headway in the Vallejo bombings, investigators in the San Diego area Sunday continued searching for the source of a spate of pipe bombs there.

Three devices, all of them similar in some way, were delivered by mail last week. On Thursday, a suspicious package was discovered at FBI offices in the San Diego suburb of Kearny Mesa during a routine screening of incoming mail. The building, filled with about 200 employees, was evacuated and the package was removed by robot and detonated by a bomb squad in the FBI parking lot.

Another similar device was discovered Friday at the offices of Laidlaw Waste Systems in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista.

And Saturday, a man whom Chula Vista police identified as a white, 45-year-old federal employee received a package containing two pipe bombs. FBI agents went to the employee’s home and left with armloads of guns and ammunition early Sunday, a neighbor said.

Associated Press contributed to this story.