“Bomb” At Local Wal-Mart

“Bomb” At Local Wal-Mart – Saturday, May 27, 2006 – 5:37 PM EST

On the news they showed our local news team at a local Wal-mart saying that a bomb had been planted in that store. The day of the bomb threat the local news said that the bomb team came and blew up the device and that it was in fact an explosive device. IndyStar.com is quoted today as saying: “A store employee found suspicious materials, including wires and a box, in a baby carriage left inside the store and wheeled it outside, police said.” Of course there was widespread panic in the city and speculation went out about terrorist acts and the like.

My first response was shock and disgust. It reminded me of years ago when a child put her hand on some object in K-mart and got her hand blown off. The state warned everyone not to look in discarded bags or other objects that don’t belong to them. This happened when I was a kid but I still don’t look inside bags that are just lying out as trash. Satisfying my curiosity does not take precedence over keeping my hands and other limbs. It’s a shame we have to worry about these things.

My second thought was this doesn’t sound right. Why would anyone walk into a Wal-mart and plant a small bomb that would not destroy the store OR surveillance cameras? It'll take a matter of hours to catch the guy who walked in and left it there. There are cameras all over that store, inside and out. Why did they plant a bomb that wouldn’t destroy the entire store or kill everyone in it? And why did he/she leave evidence as to their identity? It just didn’t make any sense to me. It sounded like the work of a really moronic criminal or a hoax. Sg said that maybe he covered the camera before planting it but I told her he/she would have to take out the whole system because of the sheer number of cameras. She said, well maybe it was one of those “Iranians.” At that moment she stepped closer to stupidity than I ever thought she could. I told her the sloppiness of the bomb as well as the fact that it was not detonated kinda counts out Al-Quida don’t you think? I said, it sounds more like a disgruntled employee. She said, yes, there are many at Wal-mart.

I couldn’t believe that she thought a militant Muslim from Iraq or Iran or someone from Al-Quida was that sloppy at their attempt to blow up this Wal-mart. I said it was just too unorganized, too haphazardly done to be attributed to extremist groups. The whole thing sounded like a last minute revenge tactic that failed because they didn’t think it through or didn’t have enough knowledge in explosives for the bomb to actually detonate. They sat it in the back of the store, not someplace where it could do a lot of damage. They sat it in a baby carriage where it would attract attention. This device didnt have enough power to do much of anything. They didn’t know how much C-4 to use to blow up a Wal-mart. It was just so amateur that it pretty much excluded people from extremist groups. It pretty much excluded extremist Muslims that train their people to fly planes into builds or carry a bomb into a public area to kill others and themselves. I have to think that this person isn't connected with anyone. He or she certainly isnt in touch with reality.

This morning I looked on the net and come to find out the news themselves got the story wrong. They reported that the device was an IED, improvised explosive device when in fact it was a fake. There were no signs of explosives in that package. It was set up to look like a bomb but in fact it was not a bomb. They said there is a suspect, a former employee who called the bomb in to the police and said, “everyone was going to pay because he lost his job.” This to me sounds more reasonable than thinking that a trained terrorist or even a badly trained terrorist foiled an attack with an inadequate bomb at a large Wal-mart store. It still disgusts me that he put an entire city on alert because he couldn’t keep a job at Wal-mart.

Austin