A Los Angeles homeowner cleaning out her garage on Wednesday morning opened an old freezer and found 20 sticks of live dynamite inside it. She told police she had no idea how the explosives had ended up there. The Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Squad was called to the home, and the neighborhood around it was evacuated.
According to the Los Angeles Times and People, the bomb squad was called to an address on Rhodes Avenue in the Valley Glen neighborhood around 9 a.m. The homeowner told officers she had been cleaning the garage when she made the discovery. She also told them she and her late husband had bought the freezer together when they first moved into the home.
Her husband died in 2014, more than a decade ago. Investigators believe the dynamite may have belonged to him. But there’s no way to tell for sure at this time, unfortunately.
Authorities are not treating the discovery as a criminal matter. The Los Angeles Police Department is characterising it instead as a lost-and-found property situation. The dynamite was removed by officials and taken to a secure location, and the evacuation around Rhodes Avenue was lifted by about 3 p.m. the same day.
What Police Say Happened
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the LAPD Bomb Squad was dispatched at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday, June 3, to a home on Rhodes Avenue in the Valley Glen neighborhood of Los Angeles after a homeowner found 20 sticks of live dynamite while cleaning out her garage. The dynamite, the agency said, had been sitting inside an old freezer stored in the garage. The surrounding neighborhood was evacuated as a precaution while the bomb squad worked.
LAPD Captain Warner Castillo (via People) determined that the dynamite didn’t detonate, but that, had all 20 sticks gone off, the explosion could have caused significant damage in the surrounding neighborhood. Castillo described the potential consequences as ranging from hearing loss for nearby residents to structural damage to neighboring homes.
He added that in worst-case terms, people could have been killed or seriously hurt by an explosion of that size. He also believed that whoever had placed the dynamite in the freezer appeared to have known that the storage location would keep it stable.
What the Homeowner Said
The homeowner told officers at the scene that she had no idea how the dynamite had ended up in her freezer, according to People. She said the freezer was an appliance she and her late husband had purchased together when they first bought the home. Her husband died in 2014, more than a decade before the discovery.
An Ongoing Investigation
Although the LAPD isn’t treating the discovery as a criminal matter (as mentioned above), the Los Angeles Times reported that investigators are still looking into whether anyone else might be connected to how the dynamite ended up in the freezer. The current working theory, according to People and the LA Times, is that the explosives belonged to the homeowner’s late husband. What he did for a living has not been publicly shared by authorities.
Once the dynamite was safely removed and relocated, the evacuation that had been put in place around Rhodes Avenue was lifted by about 3 p.m. on the same day. In California, the purchase of dynamite is generally restricted to licensed professionals, with the explosive most commonly used in industries such as mining, building, demolition, and quarry operations.