LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Only one of two grenades that were found at a Santa Monica apartment building storage unit last week detonated the following day in East Los Angeles — killing three sheriff’s detectives — but the second grenade is missing, Sheriff Robert Luna said Friday.
Luna and Kenny Cooper, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Los Angeles office, urged anyone in the public who may spot what appears to be the device to avoid touching it and call 911.
Cooper said the investigation into last Friday’s deadly explosion determined “definitively” that only one grenade detonated, and there is no sign of the second device. Luna said the Biscailuz Regional Training Center where the blast occurred has been thoroughly searched and there has been no public access to the facility since the explosion.
“We conducted a thorough search to locate this second device, but we haven’t found it yet,” Luna said.
According to Luna, sheriff’s Arson Explosives Detail investigators assisted Santa Monica police on July 17 to retrieve a pair of grenades that were found in an apartment building storage unit near Bay Street and Lincoln Boulevard. The devices were examined and believed to be inert, but sheriff’s officials retrieved the grenades and took them to the Biscailuz facility in the 1000 block of North Eastern Avenue “to be destroyed and rendered safe.”
It remains unclear what caused the single grenade to detonate around 7:25 a.m. July 18, killing sheriff’s detectives Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn. But Luna said Friday the investigation by the ATF determined that only one device exploded.
The whereabouts of the second grenade remain unknown. Luna said the department has begun an internal investigation into the handling of the situation. The ATF, meanwhile, has taken over control of the investigation into the actual blast.
Investigators last week returned to the Santa Monica apartment building to conduct a more thorough search, and at least two search warrants have been executed in Marina del Rey, where authorities were seen searching a boat and a storage facility.
No details of that investigation have been released.
Earlier Friday, the bodies of the three detectives who died in the blast were removed from a medical examiner’s facility and driven in a somber procession of officers and law enforcement vehicles to a funeral home in Covina.
The trio of bomb squad deputies had more than 70 years of combined experience with the sheriff’s department.
Funeral services for the fallen deputies are pending.
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