Home-made acid bomb neutralized in South Redondo Beach early Tuesday morning
The L.A County Sheriff’s department bomb squad has been called three times in Redondo Beach over the past year. Photo of earlier incident .
A suspicious looking soda bottle that a South Redondo morning walker thought could be a bomb was reported to the Redondo Beach Police Department near South Juanita Avenue and Serpentine Street around 8:30 Tuesday morning.
According to RBPD Sergeant Mario Fizulich who responded to the call, suspicious-looking object was a 2-litre plastic Arizona Iced Tea bottle that was wrapped in duct tape.
“It was completely sealed and basically looked like it was expanding and getting fat,” said Fizulich. “We called the L.A. County Bomb Squad to come out and look at it.. we just don’t take chances anymore, if anything looks suspicious we’d rather call them and be on the safe side.”
The sidewalk was blocked off as well as the street, but the neighboring elementary school Alta Vista was not evacuated because they were more than 300 feet away from the bottle and were safe.
The bomb squad shot it with a special BB gun until it contracted and was rendered neutralized. The Bomb Squad told RBPD that it’s very common to find bottles that contain acid that expand in the heat. According to the RBPD, the bottle was wrapped in duct tape and contained periodic acid mixed with foil.
“The bomb squad said that it’s very common for kids to mix the two and put the top on and throw it,” said Fizulich. “It didn’t explode because the duct tape was wrapped too tight.”
According to Fizulich, periodic acid is very common and is similar to pool acid or chlorine and can be found in Draino and other pool cleaners.
Nobody was arrested for the home-made bomb but the L.A. bomb squad took the bottle and will be attempting to lift fingerprints and identify the culprits.