By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – A small object at a Centralia residence that its owner thought looked like a pipe bomb, was a pipe bomb.
Police were called about 9:40 a.m. today to a house on the 1300 block of Crescent Avenue in the north end of town, and summoned a bomb squad from the Washington State Patrol.
Law enforcement was there for two to three hours, eventually taking the item into his backyard and detonating it, home owner Robert Knutz said.
Nobody was hurt and nobody was in too much danger, according to Centralia police.
It was a working pipe bomb, Officer John Panco said.
It’s a mystery who built it or who it belonged to; and, according to Panco, not one that’s likely to be solved.
It was amongst a box of junk given to Knutz by a friend who cleaned out a house at the Greenwood Cemetery along Van Wormer Street in Centralia, Knutz said.
The rental house is owned by cemetery owner John Baker, but has been in the possession of the woman he assigned to take care of the properties while he was in prison.
Knutz said he put it in his garage weeks ago, and didn’t look closely at it until last night.
That’s when he noticed a fuse, he said.
Panco described it as about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and about two and a half inches long.
Panco this afternoon said he was told by the investigating officer there have been so many people in an out of the Van Wormer house, they didn’t expect to be able to pin down the pipe bomb’s owner.
Police would like to know why someone had a bomb, he said, but at this point they don’t know.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Sharyn
Good story. But actually the house has not been in my possession since John got out of jail and that was the purpose of our controversy in court yesterday. Beyond which, I have a very good idea about who might have built that pipe bomb. In fact, I am the one who called the police this morning.
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