As part of the elaborate plan to burn and blow up the single-family structure in Escondido—which had been rented by an accused bank robber now in federal custody—authorities previously erected a protective wall and ordered scores of nearby residents to evacuate. A busy freeway was shut for about three hours and as a precaution, protective gel was spayed on adjacent homes to prevent fires
Explosives experts decided it was too dangerous to try to remove the volatile materials that remained scattered around the house and yard. So they rigged the home with explosives and ignited it from a distance, as a crowd of reporters and curious onlookers witnessed the event. A grocery store parking lot was used to handle overflow cars from media representatives flocking to the area.
Here's a sign of just how many explosives and chemicals authorities found in the home bomb factory in San Diego County: They figure the best way to deal with the house is to destroy it. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency to give authorities the leeway to seize it and do just that with a controlled burn, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The man accused in the case, who’s charged with 26 counts of bomb-making, has told officials he's robbed three San Diego banks since last year. George Jakubec, who was renting the place, is set to appear in court tomorrow. Investigators also discovered handguns, wigs, and masks in the house. No word yet on Jakubec’s motive for collecting the explosives.
The dramatic, remotely controlled demolition, which sent thick gray smoke billowing through the otherwise quiet, middle-class residential neighborhood nearly 30 miles north of San Diego, attracted air-pollution monitoring teams. Four separate hazardous-waste response crews stood by before the area was declared safe hours later.
A spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said it was "a very complex and difficult" task but nobody was hurt.
George Djura Jakubec, an unemployed software engineer, had rented and lived in the house for about four years with his wife and a dog. Last week, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego on a total of eight bank-robbery and explosives charges.
Between November 2009 and July 2010, Mr. Jakubec allegedly tried to rob three San Diego branches of Bank of America—going back to the same location twice within two weeks—and got away with more than $54,000, according to the indictment. Michael Berg, Mr. Jakubec's lawyer, filed an unsuccessful motion to stop the house from being destroyed. Mr. Berg on Thursday declined to comment.
Law enforcement officials were alerted to what they later called a backyard "bomb factory" when a gardener was injured after stepping on explosive materials on the property. Prosecutors allege that bomb experts found nine detonators, 13 grenades containing "unknown quantities of high explosives" and other dangerous potential bomb-making materials.
Prior to Thursday's controlled burn, according to law-enforcement officials, investigators discovered and destroyed at the site some mason jars filled with an extremely potent explosive chemical known as HMTD, a substance used by some terrorists. So far, county and federal investigators haven't indicated any motive.
Rees Morgan, one of the federal prosecutors working on the case, said Thursday that a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent previously testified in court that the Escondido property contained the largest stash of HMTD ever discovered by the bureau.
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