Bomb Blast Kills 4 at U.S. Home of Brazilian Embassy Official

BETHESDA, Md. —  A bomb exploded in the garage of a Brazilian Embassy lawyer early Saturday, killing her son and three friends who apparently were tinkering with the device, police said.

The blast, which occurred at about 3:10 a.m., blew doors and windows out of the garage and hurled one of the youths into the driveway of the home rented by Vera Machado, the legal counselor for the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, police said.

They said Machado and her husband, Ronald, were asleep in an upstairs bedroom at the time of the blast and were not injured.

One of the dead youths was identified as Gustavo Machado, 15, the couple’s son. The others were identified as Samir Gafsi, Dov Fischman and Bruno Perrone, all either 17 or 18 years old and all college freshmen.

The three older teen-agers were described Saturday as highly intelligent, science-oriented 1988 graduates of Bethesda’s Walt Whitman High School. One of them, Gafsi, showed a recent interest in explosives, according to his girlfriend, Sharmi Banik.

“He was telling me about the explosion on the Pan Am jet” that crashed in Scotland on Dec. 21 after a bomb went off, Banik said Saturday. She said Gafsi recently told her that he and his friends could “do better than that.”

Montgomery County Police Sgt. Harry Geehreng said the blast was not caused by terrorists and appeared to be an accident. He said there was no indication the victims had been drinking or using drugs.

He said the explosion damaged a car in the garage but there was no evidence that a bomb had been placed in or under the vehicle.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is investigating the explosion, officials said.

Officials want to know how the device was made as well as “why was the device made,” Geehreng said. “This device was much more than ordinary fireworks.”