SANTAROSA Bomb found near yard defused

A Santa Rosa man found an explosive device near his yard Monday and drove it to the Santa Rosa Police Department, where it was defused.

Investigators then searched around the man's South Davis Street home and found two more similar devices. Resident Mike Medeiros, 35, told police the incident was the latest in a series of related harassments.

Investigators said the first device was made with a 2-liter seltzer water bottle, with what appeared to be gunpowder jammed in the neck and a fuse fashioned from a cigarette, fastened to the bottle by a strand of wire.

Upon Medeiros' arrival at the Police Department, officers closed the Sonoma Avenue parking lot and called in Sonoma County Sheriff's Department bomb squad technicians, who, shortly after noon, used a rifle-like instrument to open the top of the clear plastic bottle with its faded blue label, defusing an uncertain threat.

The other two devices were identical, investigators said, and each had been lit, but only one caused a small explosion.

- Jeremy Hay