@font-face {
font-family: “Times New Roman”;
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
A black plastic bag full of powerful military-grade C-4
explosives sat inside a landmark East Village cemetery for more than a year
before a volunteer, who happened upon them while cleaning up this weekend,
called police yesterday, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
It was unclear whether the caretaker of the New York City Marble
Cemetery on East Second Street, who first found the bag last May or June and
left it there without reporting it to police, even understood its contents,
Kelly said.
There were was no detonator found with the eight blocks of
C-4, weighing 1.24 pounds each, so there was no way for the explosives to go
off, Kelly noted. But the “potent”
material — the same kind used in the 2005 terrorist bombings in London — could
have packed a powerful kick. Each block is reportedly equivalent to 10 grenades
and powerful enough to blow up a car.
After hearing about the explosives, Scott Wojcio, 25, a
welder working on the roof of the walk-up next door, hurried to finish his work
as fast as he could — even though he wasn’t evacuated.
“C-4 is pretty intense,” he said.
The bomb squad was expected to analyze the material at Bronx
firing range. The police continued digging around the cemetery.
The explosives could have been “taken from a military
installation years ago,” Kelly said. “It looks like it’s been there a
significant period of time.”
“I certainly would think that it’s still a very potent
material irrespective of how long it’s been there,” he added.
Neighbors were perplexed.
“Who would put a bomb in a graveyard?” asked
Anthony Pepe, 74, who said he’d seen crazier days on the block when the hippies
were there 40 years ago. “A Ukranian lady who lives on the corner said, ‘Maybe
someone woke up.’”
