Man finds possible pipe bomb while walking his dog
By Sarah Horbacewicz
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NEDERLAND, Colorado (KCNC) — Residents in the Colorado community of Nederland sheltered in place for most of the day on Sunday after a possible pipe bomb was found by a man walking his dog on Sunday morning.
Ben Lauderdale and his dog George are in the middle of moving to a new home in Nederland. Lauderdale says he went to visit the neighborhood around 8 a.m. Sunday morning, when he found the briefcase on a residential road off Highway 72.
“Closed on the house on Tuesday. We moved in yesterday. Found the pipe bomb today,” Lauderdale said, “I put one buckle back, and that went easy. Then the second one, I was like, this has kind of got some weight. And so I was like, I shouldn’t open it, but I still did.”
He says he backed away right away and called the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office. First responders shut down the road for 11 hours. Just after noon, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office issued a shelter-in-place order near Ponderosa Way. Bomb squad technicians deployed a robot to handle the device.
The sheriff’s office says the device appeared to have the components of a functioning bomb, but they will need to look at it further to make sure. Officers are continuing to investigate how the briefcase got there and how long it was there.
“I was like, we should probably get away. And George came up and smelled it, and I was trying to get him away,” Lauderdale said, “There are a lot of people who take walks over there… Just glad people are good and… I found it and… no one’s hurt.”
The shelter-in-place order was lifted just after 7 p.m. Sunday.
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