Cape Police, bomb squad detonate 9 pipe bombs

UPDATE: Cape Coral Police confirm they detonated 9 pipe bombs in the 4500 block of NW 27th Street, after they were found in a golf bag.

Sergeant Dana Coston says this could have been a very dangerous situation. “When you’re talking about explosive materials they can expand thousands of feet per second, they are incredibly dangerous. Couple that with any materials that might have been contained in the bomb itself or around, those instantly become items of shrapnel that that fly through the air at hundreds of thousands of feet per second.”

There is no further criminal investigation because the original owner of the explosives is now deceased.

CAPE CORAL, Fla. – Cape Coral Police were on scene of a suspicious package in the 4500 block of NW 27th Street Wednesday night.

The Lee County Bomb Squad was called in and two explosions could be heard up to a mile away around 10:45 p.m.

Residents were told to stay inside their homes while the whole ordeal played out. If they were not home, they were not allowed back into the neighborhood off Old Burnt Store Road.

WINK News spoke to Elmon Burton, who says he found up to 10 pipe bombs inside a bag of golf clubs in his garage. He says when his neighbor died recently, the man’s wife gave Burton his old golf clubs.

Burton says the the golf clubs were sitting in his garage for months, but he doesn’t play golf so he didn’t do anything with them.

He says, “my wife was pestering me to do something with them, so I went out into the garage and started looking them over to see if I could maybe put them on Craigslist to sell and I open up one of the pouches and there was six pipe bombs in there. There were six in one pouch and in the other pouch there were about three or four.”

He says he recognized what they were immediately and told a sheriff’s deputy that lives down the street.

Burton says he feels lucky nothing set off the pipe bombs while they were just sitting in his garage. He says they were made of PVC pipe with a fuse on the top.

WINK News spoke to the family who the golf clubs originally belonged to- they said they had no idea the pipe bombs were in there.