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Molotov cocktail blast
GIRARD
Someone threw a Molotov cocktail resulting in a fire large enough to shoot flames 15 feet high at South Elruth Street and Wilson Avenue early Tuesday.
Two people were about 30 feet away when it exploded in the street, said one of them, Dylan Herrick, 19, who called police afterward. Herrick said he was standing near the stop sign at the intersection talking to his girlfriend, who was in her car.
Police are investigating the bombing, which happened shortly after midnight, but did not have enough evidence Tuesday afternoon to charge anyone, said Detective Scott Strain.
Herrick told The Vindicator he’d been driving on South Elruth looking for his girlfriend because he thought she might be having car trouble. He said he saw two or three boys, approximately 15 years old, standing in a driveway on South Elruth.
He told police he later saw whom he thought might be those same boys run in to the treeline on the east side of Elruth across from the rear parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium.
Police collected two gasoline-soaked socks from the driveway where Herrick saw the boys and questioned the grandmother of a 14-year-old boy at that residence, the police reports say.
The grandmother told them the socks were soaked in gasoline because the boy had been working on ATVs the past two nights.
The report also says the grandmother told police that her grandson and another boy in the house had been there all night.
Police also collected the remnants of the bomb — what had appeared to be a quart-sized jar filled with accelerant and a cloth fuse.
Herrick said he did not realize what had happened when the bomb went off.
At first, he thought he was seeing a car that had caught on fire. Flames shot from 10 to 15 feet high, he said. “I could feel the heat,” he said.
“Then I saw the glass in the street. I called the police and said, ‘I think it’s a Molotov cocktail,’” he said. “I jumped in my car and turned around, but I couldn’t see anyone.”