Suspect didn’t intend to hurt kids officials say
Gilroy – Sheriff deputies arrested a 20-year-old man Wednesday on suspicion of owning a powder-filled device, found on Rucker School’s playground on Halloween. The device, fashioned out of a garlic shaker, alarmed administrators, who shut down the elementary school and called the county bomb squad to the scene.
Neighbor Robert Leonard was arrested at 10:30am Wednesday on suspicion of possession of a destructive device, a misdemeanor charge, said Santa Clara County Sheriff Lt. Dale Unger. Leonard lives next door to the school with his father, at 385 Santa Clara Avenue. A warrant for his arrest was issued Nov. 16.
Detective Sgt. Ken Binder said he couldn’t give exact details on how sheriffs identified Leonard as a suspect.
“In a nutshell, we got leads, we followed up on leads, and those leads panned out,” said Binder, who added that neighbors were not witnesses in the case. “There was also physical evidence left behind on the device that was found at the school.”
When the device was recovered from Rucker School Tuesday, Oct. 31, sheriffs said the bomb had already exploded. Upon further investigation, said Binder, “the device that was seen and recovered was never detonated. It failed to function as designed.”
The bang and plume of smoke, observed earlier in the day by a Rucker teacher, was caused by a different device than the one found on the playground, Binder explained, and was set off at Leonard’s home.
Leonard said he was involved with the explosive found at the school, said Deputy District Attorney Mark Hood. Upon his arrest, Leonard told Deputy Gerhard Wallace that he was also under investigation for possession of stolen property, and had been convicted of vandalism in San Benito County. The information could not be confirmed as of press time. Binder said Leonard had no history of criminal use of explosives.
The crime was charged as a misdemeanor, rather than a felony, said Hood, because “there was no evidence that the device was lit or designed to explode at the school.”
“When it wouldn’t light, it was discarded onto school property,” he explained. Unger initially compared the device to a half-stick of dynamite, but Hood said, “it’s more like a large firecracker than a bomb.”
