FILLMORE : Container Blown Up in Drug Raid; 1 Held

Authorities blew up a container with a highly volatile substance late Friday afternoon at a rural lemon orchard near Fillmore after police found the chemical--but no narcotics--during an early morning drug raid.

Officials also took into custody a 35-year-old Fillmore man and found a variety of allegedly stolen property during the raid at 3479 Sycamore Road, about four miles west of Fillmore.

“It was just too dangerous to move around,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jerry Peterson said of the chemical. “It was even too dangerous for someone to pick it up and move it.”

Narcotics detectives saw the chemical bubbling when they entered a storage shed and backed off immediately, he said.

Instead, a county bomb squad robot removed the 12-ounce glass flask containing the chemical, identified as mercury fulminate, which is used as a primer for other explosives. After placing it into a freshly dug hole in the ground and covering it with a sandbag, members of the bomb squad detonated it about 5:30 p.m., Peterson said.

Police identified the man arrested as Scott Harold Hobson. He was booked into the Ventura County Jail on suspicion of possessing a destructive device; possessing, manufacturing and selling dangerous chemicals; receiving known stolen property, and of removing serial numbers. Bail was set at $5,000 Friday night.

Among the allegedly stolen property found in Hobson’s trailer were two guns--a Ruger pistol from Idaho and a shotgun from Ventura, police said. Police also said they found at least four hand-held radios that had been stolen from the Conejo Valley Unified School District, an arc welder confirmed as stolen from Oxnard, several stolen chain saws and a stump grinder with its serial numbers removed.

Police say Hobson also possessed several homemade silencers--which are illegal, Peterson said.

A task force consisting of about 16 people from several agencies, including the FBI, took part in Friday’s 7:15 a.m. raid, which occurred after authorities received a tip that drugs were being sold on the property.