Mysterious explosions, homemade bombs reported in NC town. FBI offers $10K for tips

Hayley Fowler

Wood Street dead ends at a gravel drive in northeast Gibsonville, about half an hour east of Greensboro. The tree-lined path is boxed in by rows of houses on one side and farmland on the other.

Heading the other direction it’s no more than a half-mile — roughly four blocks — before the road gives way to East Joyner Street, Google Map shows.

Yet in the last three weeks, federal investigators say there have been at least five homemade explosive devices littered along the route, including one left on someone’s front porch, according to the Gibsonville Police Department. Now the FBI is offering up to $10,000 for any information that leads to the arrest of the person responsible, the Charlotte field office said in a news release Tuesday.

“The FBI is extremely concerned someone is reckless enough to build these devices and careless enough to leave them lying around a neighborhood for anyone to find,” Special Agent in Charge Robert R. Wells said in a statement on Twitter.

Gibsonville is a town of roughly 7,000 residents on the outskirts of Burlington that straddles both Alamance and Guilford counties. Wood Street sits a few blocks north of the main drag, which is book-ended by a Kemco gas station and a Fidelity Bank. It’s about a five minute drive to Elon University in the neighboring town of Elon.

Investigators first discovered one of the Wood Street bombs in January, but residents have reported hearing explosions for “several months,” according to the FBI.

Police were called to the neighborhood just before 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 after receiving a report of an explosion, Gibsonville police said in a news release at the time. They reportedly found pieces of shrapnel in the road when they arrived.

Three days later, someone found another homemade explosive on Wood Street and brought it to the police station. A bomb squad from Greensboro had to take the device and dispose of it, police said. At the time, police said they knew of several incidents over the last few months involving reported explosions that occurred around Wood Street “in the early morning hours.”

They offered a $500 reward for information leading to the culprit.

Police upped the reward to $1,000 when they received another report just after 7 a.m. on Jan. 30, of a suspected homemade explosive on someone’s porch.

“Gibsonville police officers have responded to multiple incidents of explosion-other, fireworks, loud noise, shots fired or shots heard calls within the last six months,” they said in a news release. “The Gibsonville police department believes that this device is connected to the previous ‘explosions’ and the device located on January 25, 2021.”

The FBI and the ATF got involved in early February, pushing the award money for tips to $2,000, McClatchy News previously reported.

Andrew O’Brien, who leads the Greensboro Police Department’s Hazardous Device Team, told Fox 8 they are seeing the same type of device and said the pattern is worrying.

“It’s the first time where I’ve had a repeated call in a specific location,” he said. “Just the repetitiveness of it.”

Anyone who thinks they might have found a homemade bomb is asked to call 911 immediately and should not touch it, the FBI said. Tips can be submitted to the FBI Charlotte Field Office at 704-672-6100 or the Gibsonville Police Department at 336-449-6677.

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