Two Suspects Linked to Series of Southland Smoke Bomb Attacks

A Bell Gardens youth and a 27-year-old transient have been arrested in connection with a string of Southland smoke bomb attacks, the latest on Wednesday at the main office of the Los Angeles Times, authorities said.

Torrance police arrested Larry Wayne Mitchell and a 17-year-old boy, whose name was withheld, Thursday afternoon at the youth’s home, police said. The youth was later released from custody.

They were arrested on suspicion of setting off a foul-smelling bomb during a pastor’s sermon at a Torrance church last month, but Torrance Police Sgt. Ronald Traber said initial evidence suggests that the two could also be linked to a rash of smoke bombings, including Wednesday’s incident at The Times, which prompted the evacuation of 1,000 employees.

Police in Orange County, where four of the smoke bombings occurred, said it was too early to link their region’s incidents to the one in Torrance. Conflicting descriptions of a man seen leaving the bombs in some of the buildings need to be reconciled before police confirm that Mitchell and the youth are suspects, authorities said.

Police detectives investigating the incident at The Times could not be reached for comment.

Searches of Mitchell’s car and the youth’s home, where he lived with his grandmother, uncovered “materials that are consistent with some of the materials used in the bombs,” said Torrance Police Sgt. Ronald Traber.

Traber said police are trying to determine if the materials found in Bell Gardens are the same as those used in six attacks in the past two weeks. No one was injured in the incidents, all of which involved a package or other container leaking acid, smoke or fumes after being left in a building.

In Orange County, one bomb exploded Tuesday at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana. Another disrupted a religious service last month at Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. A third blew up at a religious broadcasting studio in Tustin.

In Wednesday’s incident, a Los Angeles Police Department squad detonated a device wrapped in a brightly colored gift bag and left on a bench in The Times’ lobby on Spring Street near 2nd Street. Police closed off a block of Spring Street for nearly two hours, but later found that the package was not capable of doing serious damage.

Times security officials said they received a call from someone claiming to have left the package, which included a copy of a Register story about the attack at that newspaper. In the Register incident, a man claiming to be the Antichrist left the bomb with a letter threatening several prominent religious leaders.

Mitchell was being held in Torrance City Jail on $25,000 bail and an additional $9,200 in outstanding warrants, Traber said. Neither suspect has been been charged.