Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives believed two grenades found in a storage unit at a Santa Monica townhouse complex last week were inert after performing X-rays on them, but took them anyway to be destroyed or to be made safe, a court document shows.
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The following morning, on Friday, July 18, an explosion, believed to be connected with the grenades, killed three sheriff’s deputies at the Biscailuz Training Center in East Los Angeles.
Santa Monica Police Officer Kyle Nichols, in a document filed Friday requesting a warrant to search the storage area in a parking structure of the townhouse complex at 821 Bay Street, told sheriff’s detectives investigating the blast that he was called to the complex Thursday morning after a woman found a grenade in her storage area. Nichols called the Arson and Explosives detectives out and they found a second grenade in the unit.
Hours after the blast, detectives were back at the complex, where they found a pair of black, size 7 leather and wool gloves, the document shows. What evidentiary value the gloves provide to the investigation was not disclosed.
A resident of the complex told reporters that the grenades were apparently left behind by a previous tenant.
At least part of the three-story townhouse building was evacuated while investigators served the warrant, authorities said.
Detectives requested to search all storage units in the parking structure to “render the area safe, and in order to safely conduct an investigation into the storage area where the grenades were located,” the documents show.
On Monday, detectives were in Marina del Rey to serve a search warrant in the 13900 block of Marquesas Way, an area of apartment complexes and some businesses that extends into the Pacific Ocean with docks holding rows of boats. Another warrant was served Tuesday in the 4200 block of Via Marina, a residential and commercial area in Marina del Rey near the docks.
Information on what was being searched and what, if anything, was found in those searches wasn’t immediately made public.
Killed in the Friday blast were LASD deputies Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn, who were all assigned to the Arson Explosives Detail of the Special Enforcement Bureau, had a collective 74 years of experience with the department and were described as the “best of our department,” by authorities.
The unit responds to over 1,000 calls each year.
The blast was the single deadliest incident for the department since 1857.
