RCMP Watch

The Guardian - July 26, 2006

Homemade bomb disposed of Monday night, over 24 hours after the device was originally spotted.

DALVAY — A day after safely disposing of a homemade bomb found laying near a North Shore hiking trail Sunday, Island RCMP are trying to explain why it took them a full day to respond to the first report about the explosive.

Police were at the national park Tuesday morning using two dogs and a metal detector to sift through woods near the Reeds and Rushes walking trail for the remains of an improvised device found by a hiker on Sunday and reported to park rangers, who in turn contacted the RCMP’s central dispatch.

“We were contacted Sunday, during the day,” said Sgt. Richard Thibault, the RCMP media relation officer.

“Our officers responded to the call late on Monday afternoon . . . There were more than 24 hours that passed. That’s something we’re going to try to explain.”

The area, where both the keen-eyed hiker and park wardens spotted what they believed was a bomb, remained open to the public until RCMP arrived Monday and secured a section of woodland nearly 100 feet wide bordering the North Shore Parkway.

Thibault said officers who responded to the call found the device a few paces into thick woods near the road, partially buried in several years worth of fallen spruce needles, and immediately called the RCMP bomb disposal team in Halifax. When the explosives experts arrived they examined the bomb and disarmed it using an explosive charge.

The disarming took place around 11 p.m. Monday after the park road had been closed for seven hours. The impact left little damage but produced a bang heard as far away as Dalvay to the east and Windermere cottages to the west.

“There was no danger to the public or to officers and wardens,” he said. “The bomb was taken care of safely. Our officers have been in the woods looking for evidence, including fragments of the device and other things that could be of interest.”

Officers left the woods shortly before noon Tuesday carrying a closed paper bag that they refused to let reporters see inside. The samples taken were to be forwarded to an RCMP crime lab for analysis.

Thibault said they were satisfied that there was not a second explosive device in the vicinity and that the area was again safe for public recreation.

“Our priority now is to identify the person who made this device and left it here,” said Thibault.

Islanders are all to familiar with bombings.

A series of pipe bombs were planted in Prince Edward Island in the late 1980s and early 1990s including an April 1995 bombing of the P.E.I. legislature.

Roger Charles Bell of Charlottetown was charged and sent to prison. He was released from the watchful eye of the parole board on June 29 of this year.

Police are not making any connection between Bell and this bomb adding that any connection would be pure speculation.

The denotation of the bomb Monday left a small crater in the forest floor about four inches deep and 18 inches across.
But the woods themselves and the nearby road and trail were not damaged.

Darlene Upton, Parks Canada’s manager of resource conservation, said police and parks officials were able to handle the situation without any danger to the public or damage to facilities.

“There weren’t any rare species or species at risk in the area,” she said.

Police say the bomb was likely in the woods for several years. It was partially covered by forest litter and left behind large flakes of rust near the site of detonation.

“It could be five, eight, 10, 15 years or older,” Thibault said.

He would not discuss the construction of the device itself, other than to say it was clearly a homemade bomb, not unlike devices police have seen in other cases.

Thibault said such devices are sometimes built by people with a criminal purpose and sometimes simply by those for whom making a bomb is recreation.

“The plans for making this kind of thing are out there on the Internet and they’re in books,” he said.

“We aren’t talking about the way the device looks because that’s part of the investigation. There’s only a few people who know what the bomb looks like and that would be the officers, the person who found it and the person who built it.”