Suburban police locate another homemade explosive, urge caution

As authorities continue to investigate two separate cases of homemade explosive devices found in the Northwest suburbs this week, police are warning residents against making devices or touching suspicious objects if they come across one.

On Monday afternoon, Rolling Meadows police found a homemade explosive device in the 900 block of Carnegie Street, said Sgt. Tom Gadomski.

The discovery came one day after Palatine police located eight rudimentary chemical bombs Sunday afternoon scattered throughout a condominium courtyard near Palatine High School.

Rolling Meadows police haven’t yet determined how the device was made or what it was, but said they are still investigating.

“It’s hard to tell what it was at this point,” Gadomski said. “But we feel it is totally unrelated to what was found in Palatine.”

In the Palatine case, officers found the explosive devices after responding to a 911 call from a

man reporting “numerous MacGyver-type bombs,” at the Randville Condominiums complex, police Cmdr. Kurt Schroeder said.

The devices consisted of chemicals mixed inside a plastic bottle, and ranged in size from 16 ounces to a gallon.

Palatine authorities immediately roped off the area on the 1100 block of East Randville Drive and called the Cook County sheriff’s bomb squad, which arrived about 2:30 p.m. and “neutralized and disposed” of the devices.

There were no injuries and police have no suspects in either case.

Cook County sheriff’s spokesman Frank Bilecki said instructions for building different types of weapons are available on the Internet and the devices often require only common household products. Because the devices are homemade, it can be hard to tell just how dangerous they may be until it’s too late.

“Obviously anything that can explode is going to be dangerous though,” Gadomski said.

Several large cities and transit authorities, including Metra, follow the Department of Homeland Security campaign, “If you see something say something.”

Bilecki said the county bomb squad has been busy lately, but has also been dealing with a lot of false alarms.

“Every situation is taken with the same precautions though,” Bilecki added, because it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The Cook County bomb squad is the only full-time explosives detection and recovery unit serving Cook, DeKalb, Grundy, Kankakee, Lake, McHenry, Lake and Will counties.