The would-be bomber at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Spokane was apparently very serious about doing as much damage as possible.
A bomb maker mixed chemicals with shrapnel in what law enforcement officials say was a weapon designed to inflict maximum injuries during last week’s Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane.
Tests are being conducted to determine the type of chemical and whether it made the bomb potentially more deadly, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Tuesday.
“I know the bomb had some kind of chemical material inside, but we are still trying to figure out what kind. All we know there is a substance,” Knezovich said. “If there was an added dimension, it added to the lethality of it.”
Knezovich said early talks indicated the chemical could have been a compound used in common rat poison. Rat poison has been added to bombs in the Middle East for the stated purpose of acting as an anti-coagulant – which inhibits the ability of bleeding wounds to clot....
Officials said the bomb, found at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Main Avenue, was placed to concentrate the blast toward the marchers, who were rerouted after three contract workers found the black backpack and alerted Spokane Police officials.
Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said that the bomb is "not like some of the other types of devices I have seen in Spokane or in my career. This is one of sophistication." If the FBI has any specific idea of who planted the bomb, they are not saying. But this wasn't just some sort of prank. The bomb was very real, as was the intent of the would-be bomber to make it as deadly as possible.