3 Fire Bombs Probed as Hate Crimes

The moment the beer bottle fire bomb crashed through Sandra Sanni’s bedroom window, the sleeping woman bolted up and saw sparks flying past her dresser, sprinkling a trail of embers on a pile of laundry and the hall carpet.

The bottle landed at the entrance to her 6-year-old boy’s bedroom door and burst into flames.

“I was batting it down with a blanket, but all I was doing was spreading the sparks,” the Azusa woman said Friday. Sanni was screaming at the boy to stand back, shouting for her 9-year-old daughter to stay away.

She grabbed a pillow as the flames began to reach for the wall. Somehow, she managed to smother them out.

The arson attack was the third such fire bombing in 15 minutes Wednesday night in this foothill town in the San Gabriel Valley. All the homemade bombs were thrown at the windows of African American families with children. All are being investigated as hate crimes.

On Friday, the city announced a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of “those responsible for these cowardly acts.”

Police Chief King Davis said investigators suspect the attacks are connected to a small band of Latino gang members from Azusa who are reacting to black-brown tensions in the prison system.

“The other possibility is that we are talking about some young people who are being initiated into the gangs,” Davis said. “But we can only suspect at this point because we don’t have any hard suspects.”

City Manager Rick Cole said the city reported 13 hate crimes last year, including three fire bombings against African Americans. Also, the city investigated the unsolved shooting of a black man in a shopping center parking lot as a hate crime.

The Azusa Police Department has been commended by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission for its training on investigating hate crimes and for faithfully reporting such attacks, despite the dubious attention it brings to the city.

Cole said the well-calculated attacks have shaken the community of nearly 48,000 people. The population of Azusa is 60-64% Latino and 4% African American.

“There is no other word but terrorism to describe the attacks on these innocent families,” Cole said. “The goal was to threaten their lives and run them out of town. This is an attack on our entire community and it’s outrageous.”

Sanni said it didn’t occur to her that her family had been targeted because of their race until she saw an unexploded bottle in the driveway and realized that the attackers had pulled her window screen off before throwing the gas-filled bottle into her bedroom.

Sanni, an office manager at a Pasadena public school, and her fiance, Vincent Nelson, who works detailing cars, moved to Azusa from Pasadena for its quiet, small-town feel.

“It’s always been peaceful here, but now I don’t know,” said Nelson, who hasn’t been able to sleep since the attack. “We want to live here, but we want to feel secure.”

Sanni said she thanks God that her family was not hurt and that damage was minimal. “What I hate about this is the activity, that some people don’t have love and respect for their fellow human beings.”

Less than a mile away, another young woman, too fearful to give her name, described hearing a crash against her front apartment window about 10:45 p.m. The family--four children ages 13 to 19 and their mother--were all home with Christmas lights on a tree twinkling inside.

A Bud Light bottle filled with gasoline rolled onto the porch but did not explode.

“But what if it would have gone through the window?” she asked. “What would have happened?”

Only minutes earlier, the same kind of bottle had crashed through the living room window of the Smith family.

Dion Smith, 31, first thought something had fallen off a shelf in the house he shares with his wife and 6-year-old daughter. But then he smelled gasoline.

The bottle was smoldering and he snuffed it out before fire erupted. Outside, police found another bottle, unexploded.

“I told my daughter that bad people did this to her daddy because is a black person,” said Smith, who wore a T-shirt bearing the words “New Creation,” referring to a Bible verse.

“We are going to live our lives here and stay strong,” said Smith, who only five years ago battled Hodgkin’s disease and has since been in remission. “The only fear we have in this house is the fear of God.”