Authorities Defuse Pipe Bombs Found In Claremore Neighborhood

Alcohol Tobacco Firearm and Explosive agents are investigating after police found two pipe bombs and other bomb making materials in a shed.

Police found them when they responded to a call about gun shots fired in the neighborhood.

Detectives said the pipe bombs were well made and dangerous. Police said the bombs were found in the shed in the backyard of the man they said is responsible.

His three children and wife were just feet away inside the house.

Claremore police were called to the home in the 800 block of East 11th Street early Tuesday morning after shots were heard by neighbors, like Steven Farvo.

"It was pretty much just bam, bam, bam, bam," he said.

Police were told the man who lives there, possibly had a gun.

They found him inside the shed, put him in hand-cuffs and then went looking around for the weapon; they didn't find the gun but discovered two fully assembled pipe bombs.

Claremore Police Deputy Chief Charles Downum said, "He told us his intent was to blow up stumps, but the bombs had shrapnel in them, had shot taken out of bullets in them, so we don't know what his intent was."

Downum said the bombs were made out of pipes, gun powder, bullets and BBs - a very dangerous combination.

"Potentially kill you, I mean it's a lot of fragmentation and shrapnel. Very similar to a grenade," said Tulsa Police Sergeant, Jacob Thompson.

Thompson was called in to help get rid of the bombs. He said it was too dangerous to send a bomb technician inside the shed, so they used rigging lines to pull the pipe bombs out into the backyard and then safely blew them up.

"I didn't know exactly what it was,” Farvo said. “It had a vibration to the ground, you could feel the vibration in your chest."

Neighbors were warned and asked to stay inside their homes.

Thompson said he's glad his bomb squad detonated them and not the person who made them.

"If there were people walking in the neighborhood and within eye sight of it, it potentially could have hurt them," he said.

The man, whose name is not being released, was taken in for mental evaluation and will be arrested once he's checked out.

He's looking at both federal and state charges for manufacturing an explosive device.