LITTLE ROCK — A bomb squad disabled a bomb loaded with pyrotechnic pellets from fireworks after a North Little Rock woman discovered it in her mailbox Tuesday afternoon, the Pulaski County sheriff’s office said.
When Marilyn Pruss-Cash, 52, who lives in the Gibson community in north Pulaski County, checked her mailbox at 4 p.m., she found a cardboard container for a single cigar wrapped in electrical tape with a fuse sticking out the top, sheriff’s deputy Russell Holt said in a report. She placed the container in a plastic bag with the intention of taking it to the sheriff’s office Wednesday because, she told Holt, she didn’t want to alarm her daughter, Stephanie.
Pruss-Cash later spoke to her brother, who urged her to call the sheriff’s office immediately, the report said. When deputies arrived about 6:30 p.m., Pruss-Cash opened the door to her home and handed the device to Holt.
“I immediately placed the item on the ground next to the house in a slow and gentle manner,” Holt wrote.
The deputies evacuated Pruss-Cash and her daughter from the house, notified the Little Rock Fire Department bomb squad and spoke to Pruss-Cash about the dangers of handling a suspected bomb.
“She just thought it wouldn’t blow up unless the fuse had been lit,” Holt wrote.
The pyrotechnic pellets from a larger firework weren’t loaded in a way that they could’ve served as projectiles, but the bomb squad concluded the device was a bomb, said Capt. Jason Weaver, a spokesman for the Little Rock Fire Department. It could’ve seriously maimed anyone who handled it or opened the mailbox when it detonated, Weaver said.
“They had taken a larger firework and put it into a smaller package,” he said. “By wrapping that tape, you confined it enough so that when the container fails, it is like an explosive. It would’ve blown a hand off. It would’ve been a pretty significant blast.”
The bomb squad used a modified 12-gauge shotgun called a percussion-actuated nonelectric disrupter to render the device safe, Weaver said. “We shot it.”
In an interview with deputies, Pruss-Cash said she didn’t know who could’ve placed the bomb in her mailbox. Her daughter said she didn’t see anything suspicious other than a young, white male who knocked on the door earlier in the day. She didn’t answer the door. Neighbors also didn’t report anything suspicious, Holt said.
The U.S. Postal Service took over the investigation because the device was found in a mailbox, according to the report.
A telephone message left at Pruss-Cash’s home wasn’t immediately returned Tuesday.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/24/2009